Chloe Familton answers the phone in mid-air.
The 17-year-old is flying between Armidale in northern New South Wales and Caloundra in Queensland’s south. She is also piloting the plane, solo.
It’s a short conversation, but in any case she’s allowed to use her phone in the same way car drivers are, hands-free – it’s an essential tool as she circumnavigates Australia by light aircraft.
Her route takes her anti-clockwise from Cessnock in NSW around the entire mainland, looping up to Horn Island in the Torres Strait and down to Tasmania along the way. The school leaver from the Sydney suburb of Cherrybrook will become the youngest woman to fly solo around Australia in a light aircraft after a journey of 7,600 nautical miles (14,100km), stopping at 40 aerodromes over about 19 flying days.
We talk when she is on the ground in the Sunshine Coast, pausing because of bad weather that has set her schedule back three days. The trip has taken a year of meticulous planning, coinciding with study for her high school certificate exams.
“If I look at the bigger picture, it makes me nervous, I won’t lie about that,” she says, “but I have a lot of trust in the instructors who have signed me off to go on this trip.”
One of those is her mentor, Janaya Di Pietro of Blue Sky Airways, who helped Familton earn her flying licence in May 2022, a year before she passed her driving test. Many of the airports she will land at, including Gove, Jandakot and Ceduna, are tiny, but she will also put the Cessna 172 down at Darwin International.
By the time Familton – call sign November Charlie Oscar – returns to Cessnock in mid–December, she will have received her exam results. Her final school history project – for which she flew from Camden to Bathurst to collect a book – was about female pilots in the second world war, and she hopes to join the air force next year.
Her circumnavigation was inspired by Zara Rutherford, the Belgian-British aviator who at 19 became the youngest person to fly around the world, taking 155 days and encountering storms and bushfires along the way.
“I thought, this is insane and crazy and maybe I can do something similar,” Familton says.
She has the full backing of her parents – her father flies and her grandfather was a navigator in the Australian air force – but there was some resistance to getting the project up and running.
“A few people raised concerns about my age and being female,” she says. “Flying is, unfortunately, still a bit of a boys’ club.”
Worldwide, just 5% of commercial pilots are female, and, as Familton makes her way around the country, she is being cheered on by members of the Australian Women Pilots’ Association.
Wind poses her biggest daily challenge, with the Cessna 172 unable to land in conditions above 15 knots. For the four to five hours a day she is airborne, most of her work is management – checking the engine, making sure compasses are aligned and taking position fixes.
“I know where I should be at a certain time and I look for that town or landmark,” she says. “If it’s not there, I know I’ve gone wrong.”
Her phone gives her a line to her support crew, but she relies on maps, a compass and slide-rule for navigation, using her grandfather’s equipment.
“It hasn’t changed, it’s wonderful,” she says of the enduring technology.
Familton is using the endeavour to raise money for the youth support charity A Start in Life.
All of her training flights have included at least two simulated emergencies, one of which is a simulated emergency landing. Her flight across Bass Strait will take her over the ocean for a full 90 minutes.
“That’s 90 minutes with a single engine plane – obviously there are a lot of extra safety precautions you take for that,” she says. They include packing a life raft and lifejacket and making sure she is “a little more visible” on radios and radars.
Also in her flight bag is a signed handkerchief that once belonged to the aviation pioneer Charles Kingsford Smith and was given to her by Nina Kingsford Smith, his great niece.
“The idea of being able to hold this piece of aviation history is incredible,” she says. “It’s way too special to wipe my nose on.”
