Indian boy becomes youngest pilot to fly single-engine jet

A 14-year-old Indian-origin schoolboy in the UAE has become one of the youngest pilots to fly a single-engine aircraft, according to a media report.

Mansour Anis, a class IXth student at Delhi Private School in Sharjah, received a certificate for his first solo flight from an aviation academy in Canada last week, Gulf News reported. His solo flight was about 10minute-long during which he taxied the aircraft from the parking bay to the runway, took off for a flight of about five minutes and landed back, the report said.

Mansour, who flew a Cessna 152 aircraft during his solo flight, now has a student pilot permit. Apart from the flying test, he has also passed a radio communication test and scored 96 per cent in the PSTAR Test, an eligibility test for Transport Canada.

"Let it be known throughout the aviation world that Mansour Anis at the age of 14 years successfully took off and landed from Langley Regional Airport thereby accomplishing his first solo flight," the solo flight certificate issued by AAA Aviation Flight Academy on August 30 stated. Mansour claimed that he had also set a record of being the youngest pilot to fly solo with the least number of training hours, the report said.

"He broke the previous record of a 15-year-old German pilot and a 14-year-old US pilot who took 34 hours of training. Mansour flew solo just after 25 hours of training," his father Ali Asgar Anis said.

Ali, a civil engineer in Sharjah, said he had sent his son along with his wife Munira, a chemistry teacher, to Canada for the training session during the summer holidays. In some countries, like the US and the UK, a person has to be at least 16 years old before taking to the air on their own. In the UAE and India, the pilot has to be at least 18 to be eligible to fly. However, in Canada, 14 is the minimum age for student pilots to join the course and try flying after meeting the requirements, he said.

Munira said that her brother Qaid Faizy, a pilot with Jet Airways, has been an inspiration. PTI