American influencer stuck on island off Antarctica for six weeks

Boston Globe

7 hours ago

It is winter in the Southern Hemisphere, and the island is a crusted, windswept landscape of ice and snow. Temperatures have been well below freezing, with frequent snow showers. Chilean officials stated that it would be unsafe for Guo to fly over the Drake Passage, the treacherous body of water between Chile and Antarctica, due to its rough weather and poor visibility. A Chilean air force plane crashed over the Drake Passage in 2019, killing 38 people.
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Chilean officials have said that commercial airline service to the island will not resume until winter ends.
In a statement on Wednesday, Chile's aviation authority said that Guo was free to leave the island as soon as he could finance a trip on a Chilean ship or arrange a flight to Punta Arenas, on the southern tip of Chile.
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However, the aviation authority said Guo cannot fly his own Cessna off the island because it has expired life rafts and life jackets and lacks an anti-icing system. In addition, 'there is no certainty that the remaining fuel on the aircraft will be enough to reach the city of Punta Arenas,' about six hours away, the agency said.
Guo said he does not want to leave the island without his Cessna and believes the plane is in good condition with enough fuel to reach South America.
With no resolution to the standoff, he said, he has been spending 99 percent of his time alone in his room, downloading books like the science fiction 'Foundation' series by Isaac Asimov, about a group of exiles trying to save humanity on a remote planet, and trying to press his case to Chilean officials.
'It's very hard and it's really isolating and lonely,' he said via Zoom. 'That means, like solitude — like, you know, confined solitude.'
Guo had been on a mission to fly to all seven continents. He was hoping to raise $1 million for cancer research and was documenting his travels on Instagram, where he has 1.4 million followers. He began the trip in Memphis, Tennessee, on May 31, 2024, he said. His Instagram videos chronicle misadventures like engine troubles, storms, and his brief detention in Myanmar, as well as happy moments posing next to the pyramids in Egypt and flying over picturesque lakes in Switzerland.
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Antarctica was the only continent he had not landed on when he took off from Punta Arenas on June 28. He was planning to fly to Ushuaia, in southern Argentina, he said.
Instead, he landed hundreds of miles away at Teniente Rodolfo Marsh Martin Airport, a Chilean airfield on King George Island. Chilean officials detained him there and accused him of submitting a 'false flight plan' that he never intended to take and of landing without authorization. They said his actions jeopardized public safety.
Guo disputed that accusation.
He said that after he took off from Punta Arenas before sunrise, the instruments that allowed him to navigate in the dark began malfunctioning. Ice began forming on his plane, making it harder to fly. He lost communication with air traffic controllers, he said. He also began to lose airspeed. He flew over the ocean to avoid hitting mountains and headed for Antarctica, which he said was the closest place to land.
'I was like, 'I don't care what's going to happen,'' Guo said. 'Like, this is an emergency. I need to get down.'
Fire trucks surrounded his plane after it landed, he said, and he was stunned to see 'a bunch of dudes just pull up in black suits' and tell him that he was being detained at Chile's outpost on the island, President Eduardo Frei Montalva Base. As his case played out in a Chilean court, he appeared before a judge via Zoom.
On Monday, a Chilean judge approved the deal to dismiss the case after Guo's lawyers gave prosecutors flight records, air traffic control recordings, and other evidence to substantiate Guo's account. The file included a screenshot of a WhatsApp chat that, the lawyers said, shows a Chilean aviation official replying 'yes' with a thumbs-up emoji when Guo asked if he could land at the airfield on King George Island.
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Guo said he was relieved that the case had been resolved, but frustrated that it took so long. He said he just wants to fly off the island and return to Memphis, where his saga began more than a year ago.
'I'm fighting for my right to fly,' Guo said. 'I'm fighting for my right to continue this mission to raise $1 million.' But he added, 'Nothing is concrete yet.'
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