Twenty High School Students Worked On The Project

A group of 20 South African high school students have built and flown a Sling 4 airplane from Cape Town, South Africa to Egypt, a distance of nearly 6,500 nautical miles.

The BBC reports that the U-Dream Global project was founded by 17-year-old pilot Megan Werner. The purpose of the program was to "show Africa that anything is possible if you set your mind to it."

The teens took three weeks to build the Sling 4 from a kit manufactured by The Airplane Factory.

The journey included stops in Namibia, Malawi, Ethiopia, Zanzibar, Tanzania and Uganda before ending in Egypt. They were accompanied by a second Sling 4 airplane flown by professional pilots for most of the trip, but there were times when the six teenagers of the group who are licensed pilots were all alone. One of those was the last, 10-hour leg from Addis Ababa to Cairo via Aswan, where Werner said she and safety pilot Driaan van den Heever flew without the support aircraft.

The pilots dealt with such things as concerns about political unrest in Sudan to an avionics problem shortly after entering Egyptian airspace, which forced them to divert to the nearest airport in Cairo rather than their intended destination of Cairo International Airport. The avionics problem turned out to be a loose connector and was quickly resolved, according to Des Werner, a commercial pilot and Megan's father who was one of those flying the support aircraft. But Megan Werner said that local authorities wanted to arrest the teens and take their passports. It took about four hours to sort it all out, she said.

Along the way, the teenagers gave motivational talks to other teenagers. "I'm so honored to have made a difference around the continent at the places we've stopped," Megan told the BBC.

(Images from facebook. Pictured [L-R] Driaan van den Heever, Megan Werner)

FMI: Source report