For 19-year-old Zara Rutherford, the next three months will be hard ones as she attempts to become the youngest woman to travel around the world by herself.

She will fly the 51,000-kilometre in a single-engine Shark ultralight, the fastest microlight aircraft in the world.

Shaesta Wais, her predecessor, was 30 years old when she broke the same record. The youngest man to do the same was Mason Andrews, who was 18-years-old at the time.

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Rutherford started her bid on Wednesday when she took off from Kortrijk-Wevelgem Airport in western Belgium. From then on, she will fly on average for five hours a day for three days and then take a day off to rest.

The British-Belgian pilot will stop in 52 countries, including China, Nicaragua and Greenland, and plans to stay with family and friends along the way.

"I spoke to some previous world record holders and one thing that surprised me was loneliness. You spend a very long time in the plane by yourself, and it gets quite lonely," she told Reuters. "But hopefully that will be ok, as I am staying with family and that way I can hopefully feel better and combat that."

Rutherford's parents are pilots, and they were both supportive when she told them her plans.

"It's a dream I've had my entire life, to fly a plane around the world. I told my parents, and straight away, they were like, 'yes, let's do this,'" she said.

"And with the media attention that I've been getting, I'm hoping to encourage girls and women to hopefully also go into aviation and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)."

Rutherford will start university next year and hopes to one day become an astronaut.

Video editor: James Sandifer. 

Cover image: Zara Rutherford waving to a crowd as she started on departed from Belgium. /Reuters/ Yves Herman