First female Afghan pilot wants to be the youngest woman to fly solo around the world

Twenty-nine-year-old Shaesta Waiz began her solo flight around the globe. She set her sights on breaking a new record: to become the youngest female pilot from Afghanistan to complete such a trip.

The plan is to make more than 30 stops over five continents, in 18 countries, in 90 days – flying more than 40,000 kms.

Waiz was born near Kabul, Afghanistan in a refugee camp. In 1987, her and her family fled to Richmond, Calif. to escape their worn-torn country.

Growing up, she started having an interest in aviation and started pursuing something that has never been done before. She became the first certified civilian female pilot from Afghanistan.

“Every time I open the door to an aircraft, I ask myself, ‘How did a girl with my background become so lucky?’ The truth is, anyone can be me,” she said in a statement.

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "Every time I open the door to an aircraft, I ask myself, 'How did a girl with my background become so lucky?' The truth is, anyone can be me," she said in a statement.

She also became the first person in her family to get a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.

“I believed my future consisted of getting married at a young age and starting a big family. It wasn’t until I found aviation that I started thinking about having a career and going to college.”

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "I believed my future consisted of getting married at a young age and starting a big family. It wasn't until I found aviation that I started thinking about having a career and going to college."

While Waiz says she looks forward to breaking the record, she hopes to get other young women interested in science, technology, engineering and math.

She started a not-for-profit called Dreams Soar to raise scholarship money for women who want to study in those fields. During her trip around the world, Waiz plans on meeting young women along the way and encouraging them to pursue an education in the male-dominant fields.

Waiz says she gets her inspiration from Ohio native Jerrie Mock, who became the first woman in 1964 to complete a solo flight around the world. Waiz says Mock broke gender barriers in aviation at a time when few women were pilots.

But Mock wasn’t the first woman to try and fly around the globe. Amelia Earhart, an American aviation pioneer, broke many aviation records, including become the first woman to fly over both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. But during during her last flight in 1937, in an attempt to fly across the globe, she lost control of her plane on takeoff.