US influencer stranded in Antarctica after landing plane without permission
independent.co.uk
independent.co.uk
I think a more favorable title is "US pilot stranded in Antarctica after landing plane without permission". They chose the word "influencer" for a reason, even though it was a pilot trying to set a record that happened to film himself. He's even flying to raise funds for cancer research.
Too bad he lied to ground control, what a great way to lose your license, prison aside.
edit: to answer some of the replies, I'm just concerned with the implicit patronization that media applies to anyone who has a hobby/career but also makes money off of publicizing it.
And that reason is his 600K followers on TikTok.
The relevant nexus is influencer status and doing something dangerous and stupid. At the very least, he will lose his ability to fly.
He is even using sick kids as a cover for his behavior.
Honestly if he isn't a manipulative psychopath, he is well on his way to become one.
One, coördination. Did the charity know about this fundraiser?
Two, long-term orientation. Is this a one-off to gain followers? Or is he consistently giving to charity?
Three, outcome. How much did he raise and donate?
None of these bear favourably for this kid. He’s an influencer. It’s nice he’s making people think about charity. But he’s not showing any signs of giving a shit about the effects of his actions.
Or be too lazy to do those things and still have altruistic intentions?
Couldn’t someone have both selfish and altruistic intentions simultaneously?
My point being, it’s hard to know the truth but easy to assume the worst about someone. Maybe I don’t have enough context to know otherwise, but I don’t see a reason to jump to the conclusion this kid is a psychopath
He’s a stupid kid. He should continue to be allowed to be a stupid kid. He just shouldn’t be allowed to fly a plane while being this stupid.
I can guarantee you 100% he doesn't care for a second about sick kids, the same way he doesn't care for a second about the people on the base.
The best line from the Lorax film is in this song where he’s trying to put a positive spin on his aggressive commercialization and they say “a portion of proceeds goes to charity”!
Right! How much does this world tour cost vs how much he brings in vs how much goes to cancer research?
The really sad thing here is I have little doubt this could've been arranged legally given the respective parties and interests involved, but Mr. Guo chose to be selfish and foolhardy by not abiding by anyone else's timeline or interests. He deserves all the punishment and derision coming his way.
They're not a very good government.
Since the whole flight was a choice, he obviously had the choice not to lie.
>On June 28, Chilean prosecutors allege that Guo submitted a false flight plan at Carlos Ibáñez del Campo Airport in Punta Arenas, indicating he would fly over the city. However, authorities claim he deviated from this plan without notification, continuing toward Antarctica and landing at Lieutenant Rodolfo Marsh Base in Chilean Antarctic territory.
>Prosecutors allege that Guo violated “multiple national and international regulations” by altering his flight path without prior approval and touching down on a portion of Antarctica claimed by Chile.
Also, this is a 675 nm (1250 km) trip, with 529 nm (980 km) over open ocean during the southern winter. [1] Still within range of a 182, but yikes.
[0]https://avweb.com/aviation-news/teen-pilot-detained-in-antar...
[1]https://skyvector.com/?ll=-62.19079798502279,-58.98632811745...
My question for people who know about this stuff: how hard would it have been to get permission to land in Antarctica?
That is extremely generous of them, considering what appears to have been the insanity of his stunt.
“The prosecutor’s office said Guo must also pay all costs for his ‘aircraft security and personal maintenance’ during his stay at the military facility. He also needs to cover all expenses for his return.” So possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars more.
There is also a good chance the FAA revokes his pilot’s license.
Donating to charity is not impressive if you're still rich after you donate. Me giving $20 to a homeless person is a bigger blow to my personal wellbeing than this guy's "donation".
Heads up: You probably mean he is "flouting" those rules, not "flaunting." Different word.
I'm sure the entire Chilean military base with all the fuel they burn there and garbage they produce is built there specifically to protect Antarctic nature from occasional idiots in small planes.
He obviously can afford it, like the Chilean government could afford to put unnecessary military base there. Somehow when some government is stupidly splurging it's good and fine because they do it in accordance with rules, that they written themselves.
In regards to "rules they wrote themselves": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_on_Environmental_Prot...
Its mostly there because it includes Chile’s main scientific/meteorological research station in Antarctica and the airfield providing for personnel and supply transport for both that station and the nearby stations of other countries.
“flouting” the rules actually.
Loosely:
Flaunting: ostentatiously displaying
Flouting: ostentatiously defying
And it seriously irked me. I know rules are there for a reason. Some are even good and make cooperation between people easier. But when rare edge case happens I hate that the first instinct of random people is to ponder how the rules, established by wealthy and powerful, should be applied with maximum severity to inflict maximum damage on the stupid kid that wanted to stand out. And all this while established international rules regarding war crimes are violated daily. And the criminal suffers no punishment, barely any inconvenience and gets to have a meeting with US president in Alaska, who himself is also a criminal, just not of the war flavor, yet, probably.
There was this guy a while back: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust
Young people want to do daring things. Don't crucify them in your minds on behalf of powerful, rich, old farts when they try, if noone got hurt.
The particular “slab of ice and rock” that he landed on without permission after filing a false flight plan appears to be (while the story mentions only that it is a military base) a public airport operated by the Chilean air force, and the only airport on King George Island. (The name the article uses for the base is actually the name of the airport that is part of the base, the base has a different name.)
There's kind of a good reason for them to be touchy about people not following protocol with things like flight plans and landing permissions.
> beautiful
Really?
An actual hacker would figure out something clever to not be caught, be arrested/detained for several weeks (de facto if not de jure), and relying on daddy's dollars to bail him out...
Finding a way to land a plane on all 7 continents is a really cool problem, and while I get that lying to officials on a form crosses an ethical line, we should at least honor the mindset of wanting to achieve something amazing most people would balk at, and give grace given the circumstance. This person should not be treated like a felon.
Furthermore, aviation as a field has had far too much of a conformance culture, and as as result we haven't seen any real breakthroughs, especially in (non-ultralight) general aviation since the 1970s. Cessna made GA accessible to middle-class families in the 1960s (a basic Cessna ran roughly $65,000 in today's dollars) -- but is there even a vendor today that sells a decent GA "toyota corolla"-type plane that is affordable for middle-class families? A brand-new Cessna 172 costs roughly $500,000 today, and a used airworthy one from the 1960s will cost at least $75,000. This field, and American manufacturing in general, needs more hackers.
He flew from one airport to another airport without permission of the local bureaucracies? I mean you get fined for breaking the rules but it doesn't seem that insane.
not just another airport , a _military_ airport
good luck trying that in the US
He's lucky it was just expensive.
But he did get the publicity he was looking for.
The US bases on the continent have no flights in or out between mid-February and late October.
(I’ve flagged the CNN article [2] to the FAA.)
[1] https://amsrvs.registry.faa.gov/airmeninquiry/Main.aspx
[2] https://edition.cnn.com/2025/07/02/americas/us-teen-ethan-gu...
Yes.
Brilliant plan.
It is worth pointing out that no other nation acknowledges Chile's claim to this part of Antarctica. And in fact, several other countries claim the same territory.
It doesn't make landing there a good idea, but it's not really an invasion of sovereign Chilean territory in a sane way. Chile claims an enormous portion of Antarctica which they exert absolutely 0 sovereignty over in practice: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilean_Antarctic_Territory. In fact, two of the three US antarctic bases (Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station and Palmer station) are in their claimed territory, and I can assure you that US researchers do not ask Chile's permission to enter and leave.
You can call this a dumb stunt without giving credence to the goofy south american land claims Chile and Argentina are prone to making.
In general you are correct the claim isn't recognized, but it doesn't apply here.
But seeing teenagers do not think, I believe the court made the correct decision. Hopefully he can meet the court's requirements and is able to leave safely.
He's lucky he is getting off with a slap on the wrist basically. The entitlement some people have is bewildering.
There are many ways to get approval for a flight to the Antarctic. Do it the right way.
I wish there's a way to punish lawyers (and defendants) who deliberately lie.
> "I remain in Antarctica awaiting approval for my departure flight"
> He was not forced to stay there, only to remain in Chilean territory
> He must also leave the country as soon as conditions allow
> Guo’s plane “does not have the capabilities to make a flight”
As a reader, it's hard to understand exactly what is happening. This is very poor reporting.
The most interesting detail in buried in the last paragraph:
> The prosecutor’s office said Guo must also pay all costs for his “aircraft security and personal maintenance” during his stay at the military facility. He also needs to cover all expenses for his return.
So the real reason he is "stranded" is extortion.
remember, sometimes the mob has better rates
The entire point of Due Process is that it is NOT extortion. It is entirely designed to gather and weigh the facts, with respect to impartial laws created to maintain society.
While due process may fall short of those goals in some jurisdictions, acting like it is the literal same as extortion works only to further degrade society. You really do NOT want to live in a society with only extortion by local warlords, being themselves extorted by regional warlords, etc...
It’s closer to bribery than extortion. He should be in jail. He won’t be because he can pay.
Plea bargains, within limits and when not abused are also sensible for both sides. An accused who is guilty can benefit from a years-lighter sentence by saving the prosecutor's office thousands of hours of work by taking a bargain. Or, they can always decline the bargain, go to trial, and potentially walk away acquitted, or be subject to the full legal penalty if convicted.
Where plea bargains go horribly wrong is when used against the innocent as a means of coercion to extract a conviction, and yes, that is extortion-like and a corruption of due process.
I disagree completely. The purpose of a just court is to establish what happened and administer appropriate punishment regardless of what either side thinks or what is convenient for them. Without this basic honesty the whole system is a mockery.
one time I was forming a business in a state, in person. The price was $70 now, and I wanted to speed that up, as I was pulling out my kickback funds, they said I could do expedited processing for $200. The state actually codified expedited processing for $200 in a prescribed legislative process.
the only difference between the categorization of this transaction was due process.
Paying extra for expedited service is standard almost everywhere. Next you'll be telling us FedEx is extortionist because they charge 5X to deliver a package before 10AM tomorrow instead of before 8PM three days from now. "They're still just putting the box on a plane and truck and dropping it off...". And because UPS and USPS also charge more for faster service, they are a colluding cartel extorting everyone, along with your states' Business Bureau (or whatever it's called), and the US Passport service which also charges iirc $150 extra for an expedited passport.
Due Process is not extortion because 1) it is a standard process based on fairness to arrive at the cost or penalty, and 2) it is THE SAME for everyone. The legislature decided on a process, presumably with input from their bureaus that it required X extra work to expedite, and came up with $200.
If it was extortion, it would be the worker at the desk saying" I'm the only one on duty today, and you need it today, pay me (sticks finger in wind) $450 for expedited service".
Learn the actual meanings of concepts before you use them Sheesh
He lied about his flight plan, didn't ask for authorization to land on a remote military base, endangered himself and others, all this for personal aggrandizement (and he is using kids with cancer to cover for his ego trip)
"You want to fly? Your violation of the airspace laws means you're not allowed to use Chilean airspace anymore... sorry Gringo."
> The prosecutor’s office said Guo must also pay all costs for his “aircraft security and personal maintenance” during his stay at the military facility. He also needs to cover all expenses for his return.
They may be unwilling or unable to sell him 60 gallons of 100LL avgas. It's not like he's just pulling up to the FBO at a local airstrip. There are thousands of locations across the country and across the world where aviators can just land, taxi to a tiedown and fuel up, and take off...the Chilean military base in Antarctica is not one of those places.
Do you think the base has some outdoor tiedown locations in the Antarctic winter, or keeps hangar space available for recreational pilots? Are they going to requisition fuel from the mainland, or dip into their supplies? They may be looking at the weather and saying that he can't take off without deicing and engine temp control provisions that his Cessna 182 does not have. He needs to fly some 800 miles in an aircraft with about 1000 miles of range into Antarctic winter weather, he only has a few hours of daylight per day which may not be enough to fly VFR from Antarctica to Chile, depending on the winds through the notorious Drake Passage.
From the perspective of the base commander, there's a very young man (almost still a child) who is asking to buy the military's fuel as if it were for sale and asking him to change flight schedules and get permission from the tower to unwisely take off and put himself into a potentially lethal situation. The commander has probably refused the same requests from trainees with inadequate hours or certifications, or whose aircraft were not rated for the weather at the moment, and has managed to keep hundreds of his charges alive in a very hostile environment. "Teenager stranded at base" is not a headline he wants to publish, but "Teenager lost in Drake Passage after receiving fuel and takeoff clearance at base" is far, far worse.