Teen Becomes Youngest Black Pilot To Fly Over Continental US
Photo by LA Sentinel
A teenager from Compton, California has just made history as the youngest black pilot to fly solo over the continental United States.
Sixteen year-old Isaiah Cooper began his journey on July 5 and flew a total of 8,000 miles in 13 days. Although the adventure wasn't particularly easy all the way through (Cooper experienced extreme winds in Wyoming where heended up making an emergency landing on a street in Cheyenne, WY and switching planes) he successfully returned to the Compton-Woodley Airport.
Having accomplished one goal Cooper has already set his sights on another: he's planning a solo flight around the world when he turns 18. Matthew Guthmiller currently holds the Guinness World Record for youngest person to fly solo around the world at age 19 back in 2014. So if Cooper were to successfully pull this one off he would replace Guthmiller.
Currently there's a Go Fund Me page for Cooper, where the aspiring aviator was trying to raise money for the practice flight he recently embarked on (the post was originally created on May 13). "I began attending an aviation youth program in Compton at Tomorrows Aeronautical Museum (TAM) when I was 5 years old. But as I got older, I began hanging with the wrong crowd, doing seriously self-destructive things,"Isaiah wrote in the Go Fund Me post. "Realizing that this was not how I wanted to live my life, I returned to TAM. My main goal is to become a productive young man with a future in aviation, and not a statistic."
There hasn't been any updates on the Go Fund Me page, so it's unknown if the money made so far will go towards another practice flight or not (Cooper has received $205 of his $45,000 goal). Still, it's cool to see this black teenager trying to do something incredible with his talents, and achieve some outstanding goals. If you want to learn more about Cooper's journey just click hereor watch the video below.
