Lachie Smart: Youngest Pilot to Fly Solo Around the World at 18

At just 18 years old, Lachie Smart became the youngest pilot to fly solo around the world — a record-breaking journey of 45,000 kilometres, 24 countries, and 54 days alone in a single-engine plane. But this conversation goes deeper than the headline.

In this full interview with Sam Penny on Why’d You Think You Could Do That?, Lachie reveals how an ordinary teenager with no money, no flying background, and no certainty turned a kitchen-table spark into a world record. You’ll hear:

• The moment at 15 when he first declared, “I’m going to fly around the world”
• A year of rejection and sponsorship failures — and the pitch that finally worked
• The near-crash over Tasmania that almost ended the mission before it began
• Crossing the Pacific solo: fatigue, fear, and 13 hours with nowhere to land
• Bureaucratic battles, bribery attempts, and the kindness that broke him open in Sri Lanka
• The decision to trust his own eyes over air traffic control in Indonesia
• The emotional homecoming — and why he says “we,” not “I,” when he tells this story
• What life was really like after the record: the post-goal slump and the surprising lesson of empathy

Lachie’s story isn’t about being fearless. It’s about what happens when you keep moving forward with fear right beside you.

📍 Explore Lachie’s guest hub: sampenny.com/lachie-smart

If this episode sparked something in you, don’t keep it to yourself — share it with a friend who needs to hear that bravery doesn’t wait for permission. And be sure to subscribe so you never miss the next conversation that could be the spark for your own impossible.

#LachieSmart #SoloFlight #YoungestPilot #Bravery #ImpossibleGoals #WhyDidYouThinkYouCouldDoThat

Creators and Guests

Host

Sam Penny

Sam Penny is an adventurer, entrepreneur, and keynote speaker who lives by the mantra “Say YES! to the Impossible.” From swimming the English Channel in winter to building and selling multi-million-dollar companies, Sam thrives on pushing boundaries in both business and life. As host of Why’d You Think You Could Do That?, he sits down with ordinary people who have done extraordinary things, uncovering the mindset, resilience, and bold decisions that made it possible — and showing listeners why their own impossible is closer than they think.

Guest

Lachie Smart

Youngest person to fly solo around the World

What is Why'd You Think You Could Do That??

They’ve swum oceans, scaled mountains, launched empires, and shattered expectations. But before they did any of it, someone, maybe even themselves, thought: “You can’t do that.”

Hosted by Sam Penny, Why’d You Think You Could Do That? dives into the minds of people who said “screw it” and went for it anyway. From adventurers and elite athletes to wildcard entrepreneurs and creative renegades, each episode unpacks the one question they all have in common:

“Why'd you think you could do that?”

If you’re wired for more, haunted by big ideas, or just sick of playing it safe, this is your show.

Sam Penny (00:00)
Just imagine being 15 years old, sitting at the kitchen table and telling your mom that you're going to fly around the world.

Not just as a passenger, not even with a crew, but alone solo circumnavigating the planet in a single engine plane. Most of us at that age are thinking about learners permits, high school exams, maybe part time jobs, but not Lachie smart. While other teenagers were worried about fitting in, Lachie was sketching flight paths across oceans, knocking on doors for sponsors and convincing grown adults to believe in a dream that sounded outrageous.

Three years later, at just 18, he took off from the Sunshine Coast. 54 days and 45,000 kilometers later, he returned the youngest person to ever fly solo around the world. I'm Sam Penny, and this is Why Do You Think You Could Do That? And this is Lachie Smart. Lachie, welcome to the show.

Lachie Smart (00:57)
G'day Sam, thanks for having me.

Sam Penny (00:59)
I'm really looking forward to this because I grew up on the Sunshine Coast and which is also the same place as where you are, where you went on this adventure. Obviously, before we get into the adventure, I want to understand who you were as a kid growing up on the Sunshine Coast. So where did you grow up and what was life like for you?

Lachie Smart (01:19)
Look, the sunny coast upbringing, think, is a pretty sensational way to be a young person. I was always very adventurous as a kid. I had some great, great friends around me who were into the same things that I was. So lots of surfing, camping, hiking, getting out, rock climbing, motorbikes, pretty much anything that threw my mother's heart rate up, I was into.

⁓ But I was also not a very popular kid. So I had some good friends, but I certainly wasn't one of the cool kids ⁓ who just had life figured out for them. So I sort of bounced between hobbies and things I was interested in.

Sam Penny (01:52)
So then back then, did you see yourself as just an ordinary kid or did you really feel different to everyone else?

Lachie Smart (01:58)
No, I'm very much saw myself as an ordinary kid. I got good grades, but not exceptional. I worked very hard. I had part-time jobs, played sport. There was nothing exceptional about me or my upbringing really at all. I had a pretty standard upbringing. My mom and dad split when I was quite young and I don't complain about that for a second because I mean, I got two birthdays and two Christmases, but it just meant that I spent time a lot of time with adults. Whether I was with dad at work or with mom.

being picked up from school and going back to her work or whatever it might have been. As an only child, it just meant that I spent a lot of time with with adults and I learned sort of how they thought and how they communicated. And I think that ended up serving me pretty well. But for the most part, it was just a normal childhood on the Sunshine Coast.

Sam Penny (02:43)
Did you have any insecurities

or fears back then?

Lachie Smart (02:47)
Yeah, I hated public speaking. I hated it that really shone the light on me too much. think I love to do things sort of on my own time. And you know that whether that was learning or adventures, my dad always tells this story when we were out motorbike riding one time that

Sam Penny (02:49)
Hahaha.

Lachie Smart (03:03)
I'd go anywhere, but I had to go at my own pace. Some people wanted to go fast. Some wanted to go up hills. Like I would do it all, but I just had to be on my own set of rules. If someone else wanted to raise their head, that's cool. I didn't feel the need to chase them. I was quite happy doing my own thing. So, and I guess that sort of sums it up.

The way I approached life back then was I I wanted to try everything, but I wasn't in any tearing hurry to do it at anybody else's pace or by anyone else's rules. I just wanted to explore the world and see what it meant for me.

Sam Penny (03:33)
Do you remember the first time that you stepped outside your comfort zone, even in a small way?

Lachie Smart (03:40)
Yeah, I mean, all the time as a kid, as I said, I was surrounded by some good friends, one particular mate called Nathan and he was, I guess, the daring do adventurer, always keen to, to do something that filled with adrenaline. So that was obviously a lot of surfing, but it wasn't just surfing at the beach. We'd have to paddle canoes out to the island. That's 800 meters offshore and go and surf out there. Or we had to go camping in a spot that took us a day to hike to whatever it might've been. It was always just one step beyond comfortable.

⁓ And I think that's a fantastic thing as a kid and especially to have the scope to be able to do that here on the coast. Because it meant that I was comfortable being uncomfortable. didn't need that nice surrounding system of giving me comfort in that I was safe. I was never unsafe, but it just I was comfortable taking a little bit of risk and trying new things. I think that served me well in the long run. But yeah, there was lots of times I mean,

particularly in the motorbikes and rock climbing space, I think that the, you make one decision that's maybe a little bit over your competency and then it bites you and you have the big shock factor. I think they call it the Dunning-Kruger effect when you realize just how much you don't know and it knocks you back a little bit with your confidence. But yeah, there's lots of times like that going on.

Sam Penny (05:01)
So obviously this big idea that we're going to dive right into today came very early on. And it's an idea that really changes everything for you. So when was the first thought, when did it first hit you that I want to fly around the world?

Lachie Smart (05:19)
It was actually a singular moment. I mean, I would argue for the most part that radical changes generally happen over time ⁓ or with one very big impact, but this was quite a normal thing. I was sitting on the couch with my mom and we were watching 60 minutes and on the, on that particular episode, there was a segment called Flying Ryan.

In 2013, Ryan Campbell became the youngest pilot to fly solo around the world at the age of 19. He was a young man from Morimbula in New South Wales, who later turned out to become one of my very, very good friends. We even lived together over in the United States. But at the time, I was a quite happy spectator watching the episode about his adventure.

And I loved aviation. had no flying experience. had maybe, maybe an hour in a light aircraft ever with, bit of work experience and a trial introductory flight, but I was by no means a pilot. This was something that was the gold tier for me. I wanted to be there, but I hadn't got to that level yet. And, and I saw this episode came on TV and all these little cogs in my head clicked together.

Because, you know, as I said, I had some great friends, but like all young people, and I think particularly this is a trait we find in Australia with tall poppy syndrome, there's lots of reasons to not try to do something exceptional. You might have a lot of fantastic dreams and we sure all did about starting businesses or doing crazy adventures, but we would often come back to the same old excuses, things like too young, I don't have enough money, I don't want to fail, people don't believe in me.

all the reasons to not even try. And I, and I thought, being young really that much of an issue to stop with this idea of success or to do whatever makes you happy? Like, why do we always have to put that off? And at what stage do we stop putting that off and start going, well, I am old enough or I am capable enough or now is the right time.

And so I guess the question wasn't why it was more why not. And when I saw that episode came on the TV, as I said, all the cogs meshed together, that idea of doing something big and aviation, all my passions just went click. And so I turned to mom said, Hey, mom, I'm going to fly around the world and I'm going to do it at 18. And she saw I just chuckled, which was by my interpretation, permission to give it a go. And that was, that's where it started.

Sam Penny (07:45)
So was that the first time you said it out loud?

Lachie Smart (07:47)
That was when I came up with the idea. There was no, you'll probably learn with me over the course of this interview, there's not often not much of a filter between brain and mouth. The idea happened and I went straight into it.

Sam Penny (08:00)
So how did your mom react?

Lachie Smart (08:01)
She did that thing that mom seemed to be able to pull off where it was like a laugh. Okay, sure. Which wasn't, it wasn't condescending. It wasn't supportive. wasn't anything. It was just, I think probably in her head, she was hoping it'd just be a crazy idea that I'd forget about to be honest. But she also is never one to shut down my dreams has never been. She always supported me with whatever I wanted to do. She's way more risk averse than I am. But she was always supportive. And I think in, in her way, that was her going.

if this is something that matters to you, then you'll do it. I know you will. You don't need my tick of approval. ⁓ so yeah, there was, she, she didn't really react at all. It was just a chuckle and an okay. And from that point, I, I got into the planning relatively in secret because I didn't want to risk telling everybody about my grand idea and then failing spectacularly on a big stage. But, I wanted to start figuring out if this thing was doable.

Sam Penny (08:55)
So you just mentioned you wanted to keep it to yourself. At what point did you then start to tell others?

Lachie Smart (09:01)
It probably wasn't for close to a year. I mean, I told some of my close friends ⁓ and I put together a small team, but I didn't start publicly talking about it ⁓ for 12 months because I was quite scared of the idea of failing in front of people. I think everybody's naturally scared of looking like a goose, but ⁓

this concept of tackling something so ambitious when I was not the right kid for it. As I said before, I was rather ordinary. I didn't have any extraordinary traits. I didn't have any crazy abilities. I hadn't flown an aeroplane before. We didn't have money. Like there was none of the ingredients we needed to do this. And so for all intents and purposes, from my understanding, at least at the age of 15, 16 years old, this was sort of the impossible. And

Whilst now it's fun to be able to say, you know, should always strive to do the impossible. Back then, it was not something I'd ever looked at before. It was quite new to me. So I didn't want to go and publicly tell everybody right at the beginning until I had a little bit of traction until I had some form of confidence that maybe this was going to be achievable.

Sam Penny (10:10)
So did people first laugh at you think that it was a stupid idea, people saying it was dangerous trying to talk you out of it? What was people's initial reaction to this huge dream?

Lachie Smart (10:14)
you

Look, when we officially announced it, ⁓ we were over 12 months into the planning. And we had some sponsors behind us. So we had a little bit of credibility to go on. But by no means did that stop the naysayers. mean, I remember social media is is an evolving beast. But even back then, it was still ⁓

it had its barbs that it could stick into you. And when we did officially announce it, of course, we got a lot of a lot of great support, but also a lot of hateful comments. You know, some of the ones that for me, it didn't matter too much. I could put it all behind me. But the ones that I took more offense to, I guess, were the ones talking about my parents. And they were really ⁓ pointed.

in the concept that they were terrible parents. were irresponsible for letting their kid trying to do something so dangerous and so crazy. And I mean, yes, it was going to be dangerous. There's no getting around that fact that this is a risky endeavor, but at the same time, it's not like I was coming up with a brain fart and then my mom and dad were dumping half a million dollars into an adventure and I was taking off the next day. Like this was a two and a half year journey that took my full time efforts to come up with everything from the sponsorship through to the flight.

training ⁓ and so we de-risked this event so far we had so much planning that was going into it but of course you know people don't look at that.

it's much easier to be the armchair expert with no skin in the game and start calling out people you don't understand. And so we sure got a lot of that right at the beginning around, particularly to my parents, but also to me going, rich kid jumping in an airplane and flying, or you're going to kill yourself. I've got that a lot over the course of the social media streams. But for the most part, was relatively supportive.

Sam Penny (12:15)
You drew a lot

of inspiration from another great young Australian explorer, Jessica Watson, who circumnavigated the planet, sailing solo and finished that in 20 in 2010. How did how did she inspire you to go on this journey?

Lachie Smart (12:24)
⁓ f-

Yes.

Jess is brilliant. I mean that adventure I still hold in such high regard because she was so much younger. mean, you evolve very quickly as a teenager and I was 18 when I did the trip. She was only 16 when she did hers and that was just insane.

It was such an amazing adventure. think all of Australia drew a lot of inspiration from that, but I think particularly being Sunny Coast as well, ⁓ it felt like someone from home. It felt like someone who had the same understanding of the world that I did, maybe a little bit. ⁓ And so yeah, that was definitely a huge inspiration. think that was one of the first. ⁓

circumnavigation concepts that ever came to my mind. The understanding of going around the world is actually really cool idea. I'd never put two and two together that I might do it back then, but watching that happen was certainly inspirational.

Sam Penny (13:23)
the outside

lucky people would probably be sitting at home when this this dream first came out just going rich kid parents are loaded pilot he's got a plane he's been learning to fly since he was eight but that wasn't the case at all was it

Lachie Smart (13:39)
No, not even close. We got a lot of that actually throughout the whole course of the journey, even after. But the truth was ⁓ I'd never flown a plane solo when I came up with this idea. I I'd had maybe an hour of flying beforehand because I'd done a trial introductory flight on my 14th birthday, which was a 20 minute hands-on experience. And that was a gift from my mom and dad. And then...

I did my work experience when I was 15 at a, at a flight school and they, um, you know, I did a week worth of work and as part of that, they said, Hey, we've got to take an aircraft to go and get some maintenance done. Do you want to come for a fly? And I said, that would be the most amazing thing in the world. And that was pretty much it. That was the extent of my flying experience. I'd never, never done lessons. I didn't know how to fly a plane. I just really liked it. I thought it was the coolest thing in the world. I still do, but um,

that we certainly didn't have any pilots in the family. didn't have any flying experience. And for the most part, we weren't going to be able to afford for me to do flying training either, because it's incredibly expensive. And with mom and dad, you know, being separated, they're both running their own houses and dad was running his business. ⁓ And so there was lots of expenses that you come up with, you know, in a normal everyday life in Australia. So we didn't have spare money to be putting into things like flying training. Hence why my first order of business when I came up with this idea was to find sponsors

was trying to find companies crazy enough to back me in this endeavor to try and send a message to young people that you don't have to wait, try amazing things now. And so that was probably the biggest and most challenging part of getting started was trying to find that funding because that wasn't something that we were going to do organically.

Sam Penny (15:25)
So hang on, you come up with this idea that you're going to fly solo around the world when you had never flown a plane solo before. You weren't a pilot, you didn't have a license. How does the dream of flying solo then embed itself saying, this is something that I definitely want to do when you didn't have that previous experience of being a pilot.

Lachie Smart (15:50)
Yeah, that's a good question. I, and I don't have a great answer. I, I, just loved planes and I used to get, you know, plane Lego sets when I was young. And when mom and dad were going through their separation, I would go with, with mom to the airport just to get out of the house for a little bit. And we'd, we'd watch the planes take off and land with a, with a bucket of hot chips. And I just thought planes are the coolest thing in the world. I always wanted to be a pilot. That bit was never in question. ⁓ the question was how I was going to get there for sure, but there was no

out of my mind that I wanted to be a pilot. So yeah, it was going to be a big hurdle. As I said, we had to cross a few oceans of challenges to get to the starting line of this trip, but it was not, it was not a question of whether I wanted to be a pilot or not. always, always loved that.

Sam Penny (16:37)
So dreaming about this is one thing, but really preparing to actually do it is a completely different kettle of fish. How do you even start to begin preparing for something so big?

Lachie Smart (16:49)
There's not much of a guidebook when it comes to doing this. I got it wrong a lot.

I started with with two things. Firstly, on the night that I watched that 60 minutes episode, I went and googled a bunch of planes that would be capable of doing this kind of flying, found out what other people are done, circumnavigations in, ⁓ and then I found out how much fuel they burn. And I, I plotted a rough route around the world. So I didn't know what kinds of airports I would stop in at or what I needed. But I just looked at the sort of distances that these people had flown in other circumnavigations. And I thought I'll go from Australia to

Fiji and then to here and I figured out how far it was going to be, how much fuel I was going to burn and then very, very quickly realized that this was a very expensive thing to do. And that's when I stopped the flight planning because I didn't know what I was doing and I realized that my biggest challenge was never going to be learning how to fly or...

trying to figure out which airports to go to. My biggest challenge was going to be how do I find between a quarter and half of a million dollars because I didn't have it and my family didn't have it and really that left only sponsors. But how do you at the age of 16 or 15

convince a company that has lots of money to invest in you. Because I've got no credibility. I've got nothing to offer them really that they can't buy. If you want impressions and exposure, you can buy Google AdWords far cheaper than you can buy a logo on a little airplane. so that was it. That was where we had to start, was with the money.

Sam Penny (18:23)
So what was the hardest part about raising money then?

Lachie Smart (18:25)
trying to figure out what I actually could offer people. For the first year, the first 12 months, tried your standard sponsorship pitch. So we engaged with a marketing firm and a sports communications firm who would help with the media and branding and that sort of thing. And

I started with, you know, well, they, came a little bit later in the picture, but I started with these ideas around return on investment. You know, I Googled some business terms and I came up with this pitch about why I'm a good investment for their marketing dollars and what sort of, you know, attention we generate and why I was a good brand alignment and all of these things that I didn't understand. And I started going into sponsorship meetings. And the only reason I was able to get some of those was because I'd either try and leverage dad's business contacts or I would send a

letter or an email to someone I'd find them on the internet who was in the right role. So something about marketing and partnerships or brand or something like that within big companies. And then I'd label it confidential. And then having confidential in the front of it would skip the gatekeepers because they would assume it was for the eyes only of the person I was trying to get to. And sometimes we'd we'd land the meetings. And then in that first year we had zero success, not one sponsor landed, not a dollar.

in an entire 12 months of trying my very best. And it wasn't like we were only contacting three or four companies. You know, we, we approached in excess of 200 companies in that first year. And we got close with some of them, but never actually landed one. And for the most part, I don't blame them now being in business myself because the pitch was terrible. I was a high risk, low return, probably very low impact partner.

It was not much I was really going to be able to do. And for all intents and purposes, the trip was not going to happen. I didn't have the money, the experience, the plane, the license, all of that wasn't there yet. And so it was sort of this chicken and egg, you know, I can't really afford to go and do the flying lessons to get the license and then find the plane if I don't have sponsors, but I also can't get sponsors because how's the kid with no pilot license going to fly around the world. So we had to try and solve both of these challenges. And it wasn't until nearly quitting,

at the 12 month mark and having a discussion with my dad that we started to turn things around. I went and said, hey dad, know, been doing this thing for a year now, it might be time to quit. And he had this discussion with me about persistence and in his experience that even, know, when you think the tank is empty, there's always just a few drops more. And so he recommended, don't I just try for another month?

And in that next month, we did in fact, land our first sponsor. And it was because we put the whole pitch in the bin and we just went purely on a values basis. So I really care about young people.

You've got kids about the same age as me. And I think we're selling ourselves short as a generation. I want to do something to set a new standard and to prove that age is not a limiting factor. It's something worth overcoming for some cool outcomes. And I can only do that if you're going to be on my team. So I'm hoping you'll jump on board. And that was pretty much the pitch that we started going with in the end, nothing to do with

We're a good investment, why we're going to get impressions and views and all that sort of stuff. We really didn't even talk about money. We just wanted them to buy into the idea of what we were trying to achieve. And if they get on board with that, then we would try and figure out, okay, well, what's the commercial terms going to look like? But we never started with the transaction. It was always trying to bond on the value because when we could connect on that, it would overcome a lot of other differences in experience and backgrounds and beliefs.

Sam Penny (22:16)
Yeah, it's amazing, isn't it? Once you connect on the core values of what you're trying to achieve, and if it aligns with their core values as the corporate, but also invoking that sense of emotion in someone. And it's it's sales 101, isn't it? To create an emotion in someone, because it always overrides what the numbers are going to show. And you just mentioned before, Locky, that you're one year in, you were talking about and thinking about quitting.

Lachie Smart (22:24)
Hmm.

Sam Penny (22:44)
What was the feeling back then when you were thinking about, ⁓ I'm just it's too hard. I need to quit.

Lachie Smart (22:51)
Look, I was at the end of grade 12. So I started coming up with this idea sort of at the, just before I turned 16. So I was at the end of grade 11, started grade 12. And throughout that year, I'd done all my sponsorship approaches. I tried to get involved with aviation as much as possible, but also, you at the same time, I was

in that sort of prime of my youth as far as I was finishing school. ⁓ All my friends had their licenses and I was too young to get my license because I was a year younger than everybody in my grade.

all of these exciting things were happening. And I thought, why am I sinking so much time into this project, which is going nowhere? And all of the temptations of the world are saying, and explore. And that was, that was why I was starting to get a bit disheartened with the project. My dad doesn't even remember that conversation, funnily enough, about the persistence side, because to his recollection, I remember the conversation very clearly, but to his recollection, was not long after that when, ⁓ when I walked him into a room.

And in there we had the Red Bull Media Manager for the Red Bull Aviation team in Australia. We had council and the airport and a lot of prospective sponsors around this big board table and said, hey Dad, I want you to meet some people. And that's where we started to really get some traction. But yeah, that was what was going through my head at the time was I was on the edge of quitting because there were so many other alluring options, which were sort of short term fun ideas, but nothing that was going to be on this scale I thought was achievable.

Sam Penny (24:23)
So was there a moment then, Locky, where you just thought, maybe I'm just not ready for this?

Lachie Smart (24:29)
Yeah, I mean originally I planned to do the trip at 17. We ended up pushing that back in that first year of planning when I made no traction and didn't have any...

any flight training done, where we realized that this was going to be a trip when I was 18. But yeah, there's, mean, there's lots of times we thought it wasn't going to happen right up to three weeks before the takeoff date, we were still having doubts as to whether this was the right call. I'm sure we'll get into that in a moment. But yeah, this the sponsorship was a very tough slog in the early days, because, as I said, I don't blame the people we approached for saying no, it's a it's a big ask.

Sam Penny (25:04)
So describe some of the organizations that backed you. What was it about them ⁓ that decided, yeah, we're going to take a punt on this kid. Happy to name sponsors because it's always worthwhile. So what was it about them? Was it built into their DNA? Is it part of their core values? What was it that said, yeah, we're going to back him?

Lachie Smart (25:26)
I think it changed depending on the company. Sometimes it was nothing to do with the company, was all to do with the individual.

if we could find the right person in a particular organization that would back us. Our first sponsor was a law firm in Brisbane called Thompson Geer Law. And that wasn't a financial partnership. They were just agreeing to do all of the legals for free, which is fantastic because if I had to pay cash for all of those legals, that would have been tens of thousands of dollars. ⁓ So they jumped on board and that was purely because the lawyer who agreed to look after our project, guy called Ben, ⁓ he had a really deep connection to what

I was, what I was talking about. He had kids, he wanted to build a better world for them. He was phenomenally successful at what he did, but he wanted a way to give back. And this was the way he could do that. ⁓ but then beyond that, you know, we had other sponsors who maybe fit into the theme of aviation and adventure like Garmin, and really supported us with a lot of equipment.

Telstra came on board with telecoms. And again, that was about connectivity because I was going to be so far away from everyone and everything that I loved that it was amazing that in today's day and age, I can still be able to get a little bit of that even though I'm so far away through connect through connectivity and digital connection. So we found ways to bond with organizations and people that was as I said, nothing to do with the transactions. It was trying to do something that we both cared about. And that's really what it boiled down to. And of course,

Once you start to get some traction with something, then it's easier to roll through more support because it's scary to be the first person to jump on board with an idea, less scary to be the second. But by the time you're the 15th, you're probably pretty sure that all those people who are already on board with that idea have done their research and seem to be quite smart people. So it seems to be a bit safer to jump on board when you're the 15th sponsor instead of the first. But all of them had different reasons for jumping on board. And of course, I'm incredibly grateful for them all.

Sam Penny (27:22)
So those early sponsorships that you picked up, did you see a sense of bravery in them?

Lachie Smart (27:31)
for sure. mean, I won't name which airline, but we talked with an airline in the early days. And the reason we got a no was something to the effect of we don't want to see the logo of our airline on the tail of your plan as it sinks into the Pacific Ocean. I mean,

Sam Penny (27:50)
It's wild.

Lachie Smart (27:51)
Yeah, you got some very strong reasons not to do this. It was a big step to agree to be a part of this trip because at the end of the day, there still was that risk. One pilot with relatively low experience in a single engine aeroplane trying to fly distances that big jets are normally only designed to fly for.

Sam Penny (28:10)
Now, three weeks out from your launch date from Maroochydore Airport here on the Sunshine Coast in Australia, you mentioned just before that you didn't even know that you were going to be going ahead at that point. So what was happening then?

Lachie Smart (28:22)
⁓ we, so in the two years in the lead up to the flight, aside from the sponsorship, I also did a bunch of aviation training, ⁓ with a lot of different areas of expertise from engine management to aerobatics and flipping airplanes upside down and learning how to recover them. ⁓

But three weeks out from the trip, I think it three or four weeks out, we decided it would be a good idea for me to do a practice run around Australia. It's like a warmup flight around Australia to prepare for flying around the world.

to get used to long range flying, to do some over water flying, to deal with different weather and most of all, you know, all of your flight training generally happens in like 45 minutes to two or three hour stints. It's very different when you're trying to fly for eight to 15 hours at a time.

you have huge amounts of concentration needed at different times interspersed with long periods of boredom. So it's just a different style of flying that has different tolls on the brain and the body. So they suggested our flight training team suggested that I go and have some experience in the long range flying side of things before I actually start doing it for real.

And so on this flight around Australia, to cut a long story short, I'd had a few days of really good flying, like clear skies, good tailwinds, the airplane performed very well. And I was over Australia, over land. So, you know, if anything was to go wrong, you've got ground beneath, you know, water. So I was very confident and probably quite cocky. And I get to this ⁓ stage where need to cross the Bass Strait down to Tasmania from the mainland.

and the weather wasn't looking so good and I took off out of Bendigo flew over Melbourne and I had done the right thing as far as I had a redundancy in place so if the weather was too bad to land in Tasmania I had enough fuel on board to turn around and fly back to Melbourne. ⁓

So I'd done the right thing as far as the planning goes, but as I get to that North coast of Tasmania, I made the decision probably based on my overconfidence and lack of experience that I wanted to try and punch through the weather because I wanted to let test the limits of the plane. I wanted to see how I handled the high pressure environment.

And I flew into a storm right into the middle of where I thought was a gap between two storms, but they'd actually just combined into a rather large storm cell and it started failing the aircraft. So I ice build up on the wings. had a whole heap of systems drop out and I had this big electrical failure with the plane because it built up a lot of static electricity. Like if you rub a balloon in your hair and your hair sticks to the balloon, same thing was happening with the plane flying through a cloud.

Sam Penny (31:01)
Hmm.

Lachie Smart (31:03)
What I hadn't realized was happening at the time, but when I'd hit this massive amount of turbulence and all the loose objects had gone flying around the cockpit, I'd tucked everything away, but my electrical system in the airplane had started cutting out power to all the non-essential services. And we'd installed a special safety system in the airplane called Spider Tracks That was one of our sponsors.

And this device would send like a ping out to the satellites every 60 seconds with the aircraft's location and height and speed so people could track my plane. But it had some safety features built in around if it didn't get a signal out for five minutes or it would send out a level one alert, which is like a text to my team.

And then if no signal went out for 10 or 15 minutes, it would send out an SOS alert. So that's a tier two alert means the team now needs to organize search and rescue. We had a bunch of procedures in place for what their responsibilities were. If they got this text saying level two SOS alert, Victor Hotel, Indy Bravo, Charlie last known coordinates here.

And so because the power had stopped going through to non-essential services in the plane, Spider Tracks had stopped receiving power. And for 20 minutes, I'd flown through the storm, had air traffic control vector my aircraft, helped me get over the top of Launceston and hand fly this really sketchy approach down onto the ground and managed to safely put the airplane down, really shaken up. And as I pulled off the runway and parked up in a taxiway, I...

jumped out of the aircraft and sat on the wing, shaking like a leaf. And I pulled my phone out of my pocket and I had like 20 missed calls from my mom, my dad, grandparents, my media manager, mentor, like everybody had been trying to ring it once. It's like that's so bizarre. And then when I called my dad back, I found out what had happened. He's a man I'd never heard cry in my whole life. And he picks up the phone sobbing, just saying, I thought you died, I thought you died, I thought you died.

Sam Penny (32:33)
Hmm.

you

Wow.

Lachie Smart (32:58)
And that was when I realized that I might not actually be ready for this big thing. Cause two and a half years of planning and thinking you're up to it only to have that message and that effect go out to your entire family and your support team three weeks before I'm supposed to take off on the actual world flight. That's a pretty, that's a pretty big stuff up.

Sam Penny (33:23)
There must have been a huge amount of doubt in you, your team, your sponsors, and just the general public. How did that affect you?

Lachie Smart (33:31)
mean, there's huge amounts of doubt. And it's just, am I good enough? Have I sort of cut too many corners? Have I not spent enough time in the sky? Maybe all of those things were right. Because it really just showed me there is so much that I don't know. And I don't have time to figure this out now. Because the record's an age thing. If I put this off another year until the weather window was going to be good again, ⁓

I would have been on the edge of the record. It would have been too old. And so I called my mentor and he said, well, what happened? said, I don't know. Like just the plane stopped working. He goes, that's not a good enough answer. He what do mean you don't know? I said, what was the plane doing? And I listed off all the, all the symptoms. You know, I said this instrument failed, that instrument failed, ice built up here. This happened there.

and said, call your have you called your engineers? I said no, he goes ring them right now. And so I hung up the phone with him and I called the engineers and they started diagnosing and we figured out what the problem was. And how to fix it if it ever happened again, which was basically a very glorified turn it off and turn it back on again. So all of the relays and pull the circuit breakers. And there was a solution and we figured out what the problem was. And he goes, at least you learned something from it.

because now this isn't a mistake anymore. It was something you did wrong, but you learned from. He said, you need to apply that thinking with this entire journey because he'd done flying around the world before. And he said, it's not going to be easy ever. There are going to be times where you're going to want nothing more than to put the plane into a hangar, jump on a commercial flight and come home.

And there are plenty of people who have got halfway around doing this thing and stopped. There's a reason that more people have climbed Mount Everest and more people have been to space than have flown solo around the world. And don't get me wrong, it's, there are people who do this all day, every day as a job, delivering light aircraft like this. But at that level of experience and that age and trying to do it so quickly, he said, you're going to have immense amounts of problems that you're going to have to deal with. So learn to deal with it better. I said, okay, copy. I got it.

And yeah, so we applied those learnings and they ended up saving my life a month down the track when I got into the actual Pacific crossing. But that was a very scary moment and certainly rattled me just before I was supposed to be taking off.

Sam Penny (36:00)
So to the listener, it sounds quite reckless. The fact that you've had this major episode down in Tasmania, you're doubting yourself, your team's doubting yourself, but just three weeks later is when you start on this huge journey. What was it in those three weeks that changed for you and the team?

Lachie Smart (36:23)
look, there was a lot of introspection and to be honest, ⁓ the perspective we ended up coming to was that this was the thing that needed to happen to let me go. And I know that sounds contradictory, but, ⁓ I needed something to snap me out of that cockiness that I can do this. This is going to be easy because I had so much good flying recently. Winter in Australia is the best flying ever because it's pretty much always good weather.

And so the consensus we came to was this was like the final tick in the box for the training. It was something to absolutely rattle me that I got it tremendously wrong. It was a shame, a big shame that it came at the expense of my parents who had to deal with that moment of thinking that their son had died in a plane crash.

Other than that, the consensus was that this formed the training. This put the bookend on what needed to prepare me to get ready. As I said, we went through the options. We considered delaying the trip, considered quitting. We went through all of the costs of doing that because of course we had the half a million dollars worth of sponsorship behind us. We had the plane, we had the millions of followers through traditional and social media. It was all a very big...

high amount of momentum behind this trip, but none of that really mattered when it came to my life at the end of the day. That was always going to be our first priority. But no, we made the decision that I needed this. I am a competent pilot. I was going to have the skill set I needed. I just needed an ego check. And that's what this did.

Sam Penny (37:53)
All right, let's shift it up, Lachie. The day finally arrives. You take off from the Sunshine Coast, chasing a dream that really most people would think is impossible. What did it feel like lifting off on day one and knowing exactly what was going to be laying ahead?

Lachie Smart (38:11)
It was, there's a lot of words to describe it, but the biggest sense that I had was relief. ⁓ Because as I said, there's a lot of times where I didn't think this was going to happen. A lot of times where it could have gone off the rails before we even started. So to get to takeoff date was, it was a relief. was surreal, ⁓ incredibly exciting. But it was also quite daunting because I was taking, you

To paint the picture, was four o'clock in the morning when I was taking off. So we got to the airport at 2 a.m. I'd prepped the plane the day before. It was refueled. I packed all my clothes and bags and flight suits and food. ⁓ Well, not my food, actually, my water. But I forgot my lunch box the morning I was supposed to take off, which was quite hilarious. But I jumped in the airplane.

Sam Penny (38:57)
Like all naughty boys

who forget to get their lunchbox to take to school.

Lachie Smart (39:02)
Yeah, I

I'll tell that story in a moment because it's quite funny. I got into the airplane at 4am and the takeoff time was 4.15am and I did all my pre-flight checks. It's dark, cold because it's the middle of winter and taxied out to the end of the runway and I just remember the lights flashing off the end of the wingtips and I did my radio call and pushed the throttle lever forward and it's like everything just went quiet.

despite the engine picking up noise and you you're feeling you let self-lurched down the runway. It was like just everything from two and a half years are just focused into this one moment and hurdled down the runway and took off.

the team back on the ground, had radios to hear what I was saying with my calls. And so I said goodbye and thank you to them through the radio and then climbed up, started talking to air traffic control and they wished me luck. They'd seen the trip on the news the night before. And so they said a nice goodbye. And as I headed out over the ocean in the dark, it was pitch black in front of me and climbed up to not towards 9,000 feet.

And as I sort of got towards the top of my climb, the cockpit lights up because I had the, I had the satellite phone sitting on the dash and I thought, Oh, the team wishing me luck. I must miss me already. And it just came through this message saying, forgot your lunchbox. Oh, all of the, um, of all of the things to forget the 18 male and I eat a lot of food. And so I was like, Oh, what do do? I can't.

turn around really because you can imagine that getting back to the airport after taking off would be rather embarrassing as everyone's just cried and waved me off to go sorry I forgot my snacks so I'll be picking these up and going back out. But secondly we would have had to abort the whole takeoff for the trip if I went back because the plane was too heavy to land so I would have had to circle for a number of hours to burn off fuel before I could land again so quite clearly that wasn't going to be an option so

I continued on towards Fiji, but probably more importantly is that sitting right next to my lunchbox that I forgot was also my laptop bag that had all of my flight documents in it. And that was probably a little bit more important than the muesli bars and the sandwich because all of those documents were required for me to be able to get out of out of Fiji. I had the documents I needed with me to land in Fiji, but beyond that, they were all in that bag. And so the team did a great job. They ended up getting that.

bag onto a Virgin flight that flew over the top of me, overtook me in the sky. And then I met the pilot from that flight in Nadi in Fiji and I got my stuff back.

Sam Penny (41:45)
⁓ That's that's funny. ⁓ Now, your longest leg, I think was 13 hours across the Pacific. Tell me about that.

Lachie Smart (41:54)
Yeah, that was between Hawaii and California. It was probably the flight I was most nervous about just because it's very long way. For a little airplane to fly, there's lots of things that can go wrong in that amount of time with the aircraft, of course, and there's nowhere to go. There's no land between Hawaii and California for me to put the airplane on to.

And so we had a couple of attempts that got aborted to do that flight because weather came through, we had a hurricane that ended up passing between Hawaii and mainland USA. And so by the time it did roll around, I was pretty nervous. And it got up at midnight, only had a couple of hours sleep and went out to the airport. The weather had cleared up. The plane was fueled. I jumped in and signed out from customs. Despite it being a domestic flight, I still have customs between Hawaii and the mainland.

and I got airborne. I had a couple of mechanical issues on just after takeoff with the flaps not retracting in the aeroplane which added to my sense of fear ⁓ but eventually sorted those out and got climbed up to my cruising altitude and started on a very very long journey.

It was long enough that the aircraft had to turn a couple of times during the flight because the shortest path when you're on a circular globe is actually it's curved. It's not a straight line. So it had to turn there. It was just a weird feeling. I'd never done any sort of flying like that. But that certainly was a very

exciting moment to have that complete. It was incredibly tiring, a long way to fly just with one pilot because you can't sleep of course. Not only had three hours sleep going into the journey. ⁓

And, but for the most part, the plane did great. We didn't have too much weather to contend with. The team were fantastic by this stage. We were in a rhythm of how I worked with the ground team back in Australia, as far as looking out for weather and that sort of thing. you know, 13, 14 hours inside the aeroplane, crossed the boundary into California and landed in Hollister airport. And I officially broke the first world record at that stage, which was the youngest solo crossing of the Pacific in an aeroplane.

Sam Penny (44:03)
So listening to this, Lachie, you are by no means a fearless adventurer. So how do you manage the fear each time something happens?

Lachie Smart (44:12)
I've come to quite enjoy that feeling of fear. know that sounds masochistic, ⁓ it means you're doing something right. mean, growth never happens when you're comfortable. And I really liked that idea of being better tomorrow. So I

I got used to dealing with it. ⁓ and I think it's incremental. It's, it's something somewhat like a muscle is that you don't go from never being in the gym to being able to lift 220 kilos in one session. Like it takes time. It's repeated exposure to discomfort and straining and tearing the muscles and learning what you need to do with your technique. And then eventually you become stronger and stronger and able to lift 220 kilos. I don't think dealing with

discomfort and fear. I don't think it's any different. I'm a big believer that discomfort grows confidence. And it was that repeated exposure to discomfort from an early age with rock climbing and then motorbike riding and then surfing and then surfing out at the island. All those little baby steps grew to help me deal with fear. And I don't think there was ever a time where I had a lack of fear. It's just I got better at understanding and working through it. And

Working my way through the Pacific, each incremental flight got more difficult and a bit scarier and had more challenges to overcome until eventually we got it into a rhythm and just kept moving. The trick was to just not stop. If you let the fear, if you stopped, you'd let the fear overcome you and then that's when it's harder to get back on the horse.

Sam Penny (45:43)
You must have had some

pretty interesting experiences, 45 days out there going through a multitude of different countries. What were some of the really unique experiences that you had?

Lachie Smart (45:55)
numerous ⁓ very weird and cool things had happened. I on the flying side of course we've got to see some spectacular sights like I saw the Grand Canyon from the sky and we stopped in at Niagara Falls, flew over a lot of very cool country in the United States and Canada.

crossing the white cliffs of Dover in the aeroplane and just flying halfway around the world in was spectacular. I had some weird things as well, like that were nothing to do with aviation, like ending up on a beach party with DJ Snake in Cannes in France and meeting mayors and politicians and celebrities and getting a...

Day named after the world flight in Niagara Falls, the mayor proclaimed, I can't even remember what date it was now, but they proclaimed the day that I was there. It might've been like the 27th of July or something, 2016, Wings Around the World Day. So it's just lots of things that you would just never experience if you don't go and do crazy adventures. It was spectacular amount of fun.

So it wasn't all stress. It wasn't all bad times and hard flights. You know, they were certainly some of the more hair raising moments and more exciting stories, but there was a lot that happened that was just so grateful that I got to experience.

Sam Penny (47:08)
So what was the lowest moment then when quitting felt closest?

Lachie Smart (47:13)
It was three quarters of the way around the of flying. So I'd been flying for five weeks, I think, at this stage. And when I got to the UK, I thought that's, you know, I'm done and dusted. I'm on the home straight. The rest of my flying from the UK onwards was predominantly over land.

I thought it was going to be a lot easier because the oceanic crossings are the hard bit and scary bit because you don't have communications, you don't have anywhere to go. The Atlantic crossing was scary because it was cold. And so I thought I'd done all the difficult bits and now I was just on the cruisey, straight run home, but I was 100 % wrong. The first half was the easy bit. The second half was where it got challenging. And in the run up to this particular moment, that was probably my lowest. I had a bunch of things go wrong. I mean,

I had terrible weather in Greece. had air traffic control issues in Egypt where I couldn't get onto air traffic control and thought the aeroplanes at risk of getting shot down. I lost comms over Saudi and hit dust storms and heat storms and aeroplane underperformed. I injured myself in Oman through the repeated turbulence that I'd hit for like nine hours on the flight before so I could barely walk. And then I busted a brake line in the Middle East in Oman and then climbed out.

From there all the way down over the Indian Ocean and landed in near zero visibility conditions in Sri Lanka. And I was just tired. Like I was just really run down.

And the night before I go to leave Sri Lanka, and I don't get me wrong, had a beautiful time for the first day in Sri Lanka, first day and a half where I'd been sponsored my stay there by a lady called Dushi in this beautiful five star resort that she owned on the beach in Colombo. And I thought, finally, my luck is turning around. Like this is more like it. I'm in five star, I'm getting beautiful food.

I'm on the beach. That was the first time I'd actually set foot on sand in a while, which was a really cool experience to just walk barefoot down the beach there. But I was getting ready to pack my bags and at 8.30 at night, I get a call and it's from my handler, the company that was supposed to look after me while I was on the ground there and find fuel for the airplane and look after customs and immigration and flight plans and security and all of the logistics. I'd have a handler for every location that I went to.

and they called me and said, hey captain, we need you to pay us. I said, okay, you know, it's late. Why don't we do this tomorrow at the airport when I'm there? And they said, no, we need you to pay us right now.

I said, okay, well, where do I meet you? Because the normal thing is you'd pay in US dollars in cash. ⁓ The US dollar was very stable and quite strong. ⁓ And it was what most companies would deal with, especially for light aircraft, they wanted US dollars in cash. So I had like 15 to 20,000 US dollars hidden around the plane at any one time. So I assumed they would want to meet up and have me pay them cash, but they said, no, we just want you to pay us electronically, just wire the money through. I said, you sure? I said, yep.

And so I said, okay, ⁓ I looked at the details they had on the quote and the invoice they'd given me, the team back home wired the money across, was like five grand or something like that. But I was near the end of the trip, so we didn't have a whole lot of money left. And as soon as I sent them the receipt, the payment advice, they called straight back and said, sorry, captain can't accept this receipt, you're just going to have to pay us cash tomorrow at the airport.

And I said, No, I'm not sorry. I'm not doing that. And I've paid you have done the right thing. I know it was the right bank. This is on your quote on your invoice. All the paperwork was fine. This is it. And they said, No, no, you got to pay us cash tomorrow at the airport. can't accept your receipt of payment. And if you don't, we're not going to let you leave. Got it.

And I didn't know what to do because from my understanding, the threat was if I don't pay them again, that I was going to get arrested. And I didn't know any better. That probably wouldn't have happened maybe near on hindsight, but that was the impression that I had at the time.

And ⁓ I didn't have any friends in Sri Lanka other than Dushi. I didn't know what to do. And so I called them back and I bluffed them the best I could. I said, if you arrest me tomorrow, you're going to feel the full weight of the Australian government. You'll never get a scrap of aviation business again. The international media is going to bust down your front door asking why you're arresting innocent 18 year olds, blah, blah, blah, blah. None of this was true. I don't think anyone would have cared. But I did my best to try and bluff. And they said, look, we'll

speak to our managers and we'll get back to you. I didn't hear back from them that night and so at two o'clock in the morning I packed my bag ⁓ and I've headed out to the airport. I didn't tell anyone that I was leaving except for Dushi ⁓ and she said I'll drive you.

And so ⁓ I told her at midnight that I was leaving at 2am. And in that time, she woke, I didn't know this at the time, but she woken her staff up and they cooked me this beautiful food like this breakfast box with sandwiches and fresh pastries and all this amazing food in it. And they'd given it to me and it still warm when I got it.

Anyway, I got to the airplane, she said, here, take this with you and gave me the box and I didn't know what it was. I just said, thanks Dushi and I put that on the seat of the plane. And I jumped in, I took off and by four o'clock in the morning, I was airborne on my way out of Sri Lanka. So I thought I had to get out. I thought I was going to get arrested and I didn't have enough money to pay them a second time. Because we weren't going to have enough to get home. We're near the end of the end of the trip.

And I climbed up, I got out of Sri Lanka, I crossed into the airspace with Indonesia or Malaysia. And as I crossed that airspace boundary, I went out of like terminator mode where I was just focused in getting through the problem that I had. And I saw the lunchbox from Dushi and I opened up the lid and I saw all this beautiful food. And the first thing I saw was there's like three layered cheese sandwich. And as soon as I saw that, I just broke down.

I just started bawling my eyes out because I'd just been going through so much and there was so much pressure and I was 18. Like I didn't have the decades of experience to look back on and be able to contextualize what I was going through. This was the first time I was doing anything really big. And so I broke down and cried because for weeks and weeks and weeks, it had been nothing but stress. And then this one very nice act of kindness, ⁓

just rocketed me. It just showed me that I am not a robot. Like I'm not a machine. I'm just a human being and that I've got limits. And I think I just found mine. and it was like the autopilot was on because there was no way I was flying aeroplane in that state. I was just a mess, bawling my eyes out.

for 10 minutes and then I pulled myself together a little bit and decided that that was it. I was getting home straight away. And so from that point onwards, I flew every single day until I got back to Australia.

Sam Penny (54:08)
So you're flying

out of Sri Lanka on your way home down through Asia, the last few legs, you finally hit Indonesia, one of the last legs of your journey. You have an incident over Indonesia. Tell me about that.

Lachie Smart (54:22)
Yeah, look, when I was trying to leave Indonesia, the...

Air traffic control shut down the airport. So I had a bunch of problems to begin with. One, I couldn't get fuel because I didn't realize the system there was what we call service fees here are known as bribes there. And I had to pay the right people the right amount of money. Once I overcame that challenge, we got fuel in the plane, I was running late. And I went to go and get my clearance to start up the engine and take off. And air traffic control said, we've shut down the airport. Sorry, the president is now using this airport. So no aircraft are allowed to leave.

And so I sat there for another two hours and I was starting to get towards the end of the window of where I could take off because I needed customs to be available on the other end when I got to Australia. And so I was, I called up the tower and I said, look, president took off like 40 minutes ago. I'm in a piston engine aircraft. He was in a jet. So there's no way I can catch him. There is like, this is safe. I have to get out or I'll miss my customs window in Australia.

and they ended up giving me priority. So I got to start the engine. I was the first out to the runway and I took off. And as I was climbing up, climbing up, there's a lot of mountains in Indo And so I got up to my cruising altitude, which was nine or 10,000 feet. And that's as high as you can fly really without oxygen because above that the air starts to get really thin and you can't breathe too well. You can go up for short periods of time, but mountains were quite, quite tall.

And I was flying and looking at this mountain getting mighty close in front of me because the air traffic control hadn't let me stay on my flight path. They had sent me in a different direction for whatever reason. And I said, look, it's, I jumped on the radio and said, Jakarta, this is Victor Hotel India Bravo Charlie. I'm going to need a new heading soon because there's a mountain in front of me. And they said negative, know, maps say it's clear. I said, well, your maps are wrong because I'm looking at the mountain and I'm going to hit it.

Sam Penny (56:07)
you

Lachie Smart (56:17)
and they ended up arguing with me. They couldn't believe that there was a mountain in front of me and we had this big argument and eventually I just switched the radio off. I was so tired and I was a bit sick of dealing with people who didn't seem to care and ⁓ I flew myself out of Indonesia and I figured that they weren't going to launch jets that cost 80 grand an hour to come after the plane that's leaving the country anyway and they didn't ⁓ and I got out the other side of ⁓

at the other side of the land mass that I was flying over with Indo and I turned the radio back on and apologized and I tried to get my new frequency to move across to because the long range radio you have to be the frequencies change over the course of the day because we're trying to bounce the signal off the atmosphere and off the surface of the earth because the atmosphere changes shape as it heats up and cools down they change the radio frequencies that that are in use so they gave me all the wrong frequencies none of them I could get through to Australia on ⁓

And eventually I just went through the whole list trying to find the one that would actually get me through. And I crossed a position called Sapta. And Sapta is the boundary between Australia's airspace and Indonesia's. And as I crossed that boundary, I flipped my radio and eventually found the correct frequency. And I jumped ⁓ to a controller who was in Brisbane. I said, Brisbane Control, it's Victor Hotel India Bravo Charlie at position Sapta and at 9,000 feet. And they said, mate.

Welcome home, we've been watching you and it's a pleasure to have you back in our airspace. And that was just for me, the most euphoric feeling to hear that g'day come over the radio and yeah, travel down into Broome and touch down in WA there for the last few legs to get home from WA to Queensland.

Sam Penny (58:01)
So you finally make it back to the Sunshine Coast. What was the first emotion that hit you when you touched down?

Lachie Smart (58:08)
I went through about 15 emotions in one second, but the flight in was so special, it spectacular. I got to fly side by side with ⁓ my flight instructor who taught me how to fly. He came up with his own aeroplane and together we flew side by side down the beach and he peeled off ahead of me and landed.

And I didn't know what to expect because I'd been told nothing about the arrival ceremony. I'd asked a bunch of times, but the team had always just kept it quiet. They said, you don't need to know what's happening. You just need to know to land at 7.30 AM. ⁓ And I said, okay. And so ⁓ when I did eventually get to the runway and line up with that runway, was ironically the wind direction that day was the same runway that I'd taken off on.

54 days earlier and also the same runway I'd done my very first solo flight on. So all of them were runway 1-8 Sunshine Coast, which now doesn't exist anymore because they've done renovations and got rid of the runway. ⁓ it was so cool to be lined up. And then as I come down on the familiar approach and touch down on the runway.

I pulled off and they did, it's a really big honor when they want to honor someone in aviation they have these fire engines line up on the side of the taxiway and they shoot the water arch over the top of the taxiway and so I got to taxi off the runway underneath the water arch and my mum was the one standing there with the paddles and marshaled me in which was really special her marshalling was horrendous I was getting told to go in all sorts of directions but I figured out there was a big arrow on the ground I figured they want me to park on so I parked the aeroplane on that.

Sam Penny (59:35)
Ha ha ha ha.

Lachie Smart (59:42)
And I've shut down the engine and got out and it was just euphoric. I just could not believe that we'd done it. And it was so relieving because I'd staked a lot on this, you know, like I'd said right from the beginning that I was doing this to prove that being young wasn't the limit. Like there wasn't the limiting factor of age that was going to stop you doing amazing things. And if I had stuffed it up or had got it wrong, all it would have done was just have a home. The idea that young people are incapable and lazy and cut corners and are entitled and aren't capable of

doing

big things. ⁓ So it was just such a relief and so exciting to be back.

back on home turf and to see all the people that I love and that care about me too. Other than seeing my family, my dad flew over and then I had some grandparents in the UK and aunties and uncles. Other than seeing them at the halfway point, for the last two months I hadn't seen a single person that I knew, which was odd for me because I'd never traveled really alone. It was the first time I'd been away from people. So was so, so exciting to be back. To see mom, to see dad, my mates.

and had a really good time. And because it was only the morning when I landed, I still had the whole day to go to the beach and eat food and just catch a hold.

Sam Penny (1:00:57)
A few times, Lachie, in this discussion, and you're talking about each of the legs and some of the experiences, you always refer to it as we. Is that when you say we, is that you and your plane? Is it you and your team? What is that? What is the way that you keep referring to?

Lachie Smart (1:01:14)
⁓ it's, it's referring to, all of those things. I am never, I never use the word I with this trip because as much as the world record title was solo and had my name on it, ⁓ none of this was possible with just me. mean, from, from the sponsorship through to the flight planning and logistics, to my training, to people booking the accommodation, fundraising events. ⁓

the air traffic controllers, customs officials, handlers, there were literally tens of thousands of people, all of whose individual efforts were the only thing that made this trip possible. And whilst I was the only one in the aeroplane and I was the only one that had my hands on the controls, outside of that, none of this was a solo effort.

And none of them got the glory either. mean, I was the one who got to be on the TV and got the world record and got the pats on the backs and got to do the speeches. really, this all belongs to them. wasn't, it was never just me. It was never a solo trip. I was just the one who was lucky enough to be able to be the pilot.

Sam Penny (1:02:24)
Lachie obviously, the name of the show is called Why do you think you do that? So and it's obviously the question that I ask every guest on the show. After all of the setbacks that you had through the sponsorship and doubting yourself when you flew into Launceston in Tasmania, and eventually getting the 45 days done of this circumnavigation and being the youngest to fly solo around the world. Why do you think you could do that?

Lachie Smart (1:02:53)
I the question in my mind, I never thought that I could. But I also didn't think I couldn't. And that was the key for me. I wanted to prove it one way or the other because the question was worth asking. And look, there were plenty times where it could have gone wrong, but...

It didn't but that was only because we had the willingness to keep going when everybody else would have quit and so I guess why do I think I could do that was well I didn't know why I couldn't and that was a good enough reason to try

Sam Penny (1:03:25)
Did you have 100 % belief that you could succeed or did you just have enough belief to start?

Lachie Smart (1:03:33)
That's a good question. ⁓ No, I don't think I had a hundred percent belief the whole time. That was definitely for the most part, I was always confident that I would get there in the end. But I didn't always have a clear picture of what that looked like. I didn't have the knowledge of going, I'm going to get there and this is how. I only had the knowledge that I was, I was going to figure it out. And that was enough to get started.

We had all the planning under the sun. mean, we had redundancy plans for

engine and the aircraft and parachutes and what to do in survival situations in ice and desert and rainforest on the beach, whatever it might have been in the ocean, like we had all of the planning. ⁓ But as far as knowing what was going to happen, I can't forecast the weather, can't forecast geopolitics, I can't forecast whether the engine will fail halfway through the flight. Like there's a lot of unknowns. And ⁓ I think for me, it was just having a confidence to start and knowing that I had the right people around me and the right mentality to figure it out.

that way.

Sam Penny (1:04:38)
So records are one thing, but I certainly know through all of the guests that I've had on here, amazing adventurers that these big adventures always leave us changed both mentally, physically. So how did life change after you became the youngest to fly solo around the world?

Lachie Smart (1:04:56)
You know, it did and it didn't. ⁓ My grandma said to me when she looked at me when I landed, I walked up to her and she said, you've changed. I said, what do you mean? I've only been gone 54 days. She goes, no, you've changed.

And then she found this photo, a photo of me before I left. then ⁓ someone took a photo the day before I landed and she put these two side by side and they were taken like 60 days apart or something like that. I'll send them to you after you can have a look. But I had, I had changed. I'd looked different. ⁓ And I think my whole perspective had changed in that short period of time because I'd been through a lot. ⁓

I knew a lot more about what I could do. And I knew that was probably a lot less that I couldn't do. You know, I was, I was more confident to go out and try things now. I felt like this was a beginning for me. I didn't feel like the adventure was an end. I didn't know what was coming next. And that's something I probably

could have done a lot better was to plan for ⁓ landing day plus one because I had no clue what I was going to do when I got back. And that was really, really tough because for two and a half years I had a very, very clear North star. I always knew where I was moving towards despite the fact there was many roadblocks to get through. I had no question where I was going and what I wanted to do. But the day after I got back, that was a pretty, pretty blank slate for me.

Sam Penny (1:06:33)
How did that affect

you?

Lachie Smart (1:06:34)
Look, I'm not going to say I handled it particularly well, to be honest. I, ⁓ I w I've really struggled mentally because I had done so much to get to here and, ⁓ and for the first few weeks, when you come back from an adventure like this, you do get to live that D Grade celebrity life where you're going to just be on TV in Sydney one day and then getting flown out to an air show the next, and then

being asked to give speeches, which I was very scared off, but learned to get better at. And ⁓ it was all excitement and every second was filled with something and someone wanting to do something with you. But that fades very quickly. The next news cycle hits and now you're yesterday's news. And it's not that I ever did it for that attention because I knew that was going to fade and it was never something that I was particularly gratified by anyway, but ⁓

When the time started freeing up and I started going, well, now what? I really went into a massive slump. I I didn't have anything to aim for. I had huge amounts of energy expenditure ready to go because I'd gotten very mentally fit. I was ready to do lots of big high energy tasks. And that's all I had done really for a number of years. And now it was sort of, well,

Now what? And I was under this misguided impression that I was going to come back and I was going to figure it all out because now I was the guy who'd flying around the world. But the truth is I was still just an 18 year old kid on the sunny coast. Nothing had changed about that. I'd learned some things about myself. I'd learned some things about the world. And I certainly had the ambition to go and do amazing things, but I had no idea what that was going to be and I hadn't planned for it. And that was a big mistake. And the ironic thing was I'd been warned about it.

I'd been warned about it by Olympians. I'd been warned about it by my mentor, by other world record holders, by a lot of people who had done amazing things who I was fortunate enough to talk to in the lead up to this flight. They'd all said, you need to figure it out now because you won't know when you get back and it'll hit you like a ton of bricks. And I always thought they're just being a bit silly and a bit over, know, precautious, but they were right. Cause you come back and then what?

And so I went into a very big slump ⁓ and it took me a little while to get out of that, but I did and moved on to other things. I think it took time. It took time and I just went and buried myself into anything that could give me that hit. ⁓ And again, I feel sorry for my mother and all of this because that's when I took up ⁓ road bikes and more dirt bikes and got further into rock climbing, doing bigger mountains and

Sam Penny (1:08:58)
How did you do that?

Lachie Smart (1:09:20)
more abseiling, and then I did aerobatics, started flipping airplanes upside down as I got ticked off to do that as a, as a qualification. I started getting into business endeavors, just throwing myself into anything that could give me some sort of feeling that I was doing the top of my game again. And then I learned to stop chasing that high because I don't think it's healthy. That's where you can get into the risk of it never being enough. And that's when you're going to hurt yourself.

And I had some discussions with my dad and some of my friends. And that's when I started getting into business. And that was something that I could still perform well at. I could help people with and I invested a lot into into my speaking career. So I launched the speaking business. I went over to the United States and ⁓ that's where Ryan and I lived together in Nashville, having a great time flying his airplane over there. And we both went and did public speaking training with two different very, very

competent speaker trainers over in the United States and started speaking on different topics and events there. And then after nearly a year of living in Nashville, ⁓

moved back to Australia and I really launched the public speaking side then and got into my dad's family business as well to learn about business alongside what the speaking business was. And that's where I got to translate all of the things I was really passionate about because none of that had stopped. I still really cared about ⁓ young people and then giving them the best start to life in a world that's changing very quickly. That's when I really started getting into the youth leadership side. ⁓

That's where my passion really got into a stable state. I was able to do things that managed to deliver really good value to young people and it didn't have to come at the expense of adrenaline.

Sam Penny (1:11:06)
So what lessons surprise you most afterwards?

Lachie Smart (1:11:08)
One of the biggest lessons I think I learned after all of this and it only, it only mattered when I got home was about empathy. Because for me, especially coming off this and it's applicable to everyone irrespective of whether you've flown around the world or not. I came back and I compared everything to that. And when someone would say, ⁓ it's hot, I'd go.

What do mean it's hot? I flew for 11 hours through the desert in Saudi Arabia with a failing aircraft, no air conditioning and a fully fireproof flight suit. And I jarred so many joints in my back through that turbulence that I couldn't walk when I got out the other end. Like it's 30 degrees where we're okay here. But it's not fair for me to make that comparison because I had done all that, but the person I was speaking to hadn't. And in this particular case, it was with my mom.

She had her air conditioning break in her car while I was away. And she said, can I look at it when I got back? And I just kept rushing off going, yeah, look at it. look at it. Then I'd go and do a TV appearance or kind of a speech or fly away for a trip. Come back and I'll look, you know, it's hot. you, can you look at the air conditioning in my car? Yeah, I'll get to it. Mom, don't worry. Don't worry. And after about the fourth or fifth time, I snapped at her and said, mom, let's drop it. If I can fly through the desert and do all this stuff, you can drive to work with the window down for 15 minutes. I'll get to it when I get to it and stormed off. And.

And I called someone and one of my mates and I had a whinge and he said, what are you doing? And I was like, what do you mean? If I can do all that, why can't she drive? And he goes, yeah, you did that. She didn't. Why is it fair for you to put that expectation on her? She doesn't have that same reference point. She hasn't seen what you've seen and done what you've done. That is not a fair comparison to make. And I went, oh my God, you're right. Like that's not fair.

And that's why I realized then that it's the context of our experience that shapes the way we view the world. And unless we're going to put the effort into understanding somebody else's context of their experience, someone else's viewpoint, then we can't be the first ones to judge.

because they haven't had the same experience as us. They won't see the world the same way. And that's okay, because everybody's going to have a different lens through which they see things. And I went back and of course, apologize to my mom. And that's when I started to learn to stop judging people and judging situations based off the fact that I'd had a really weird experience once when I was 18. Because that's not a good lens to view the rest of the world through because that's a very small pool of people that see it the same way that I do. And that's a blessing and a curse. mean, I'm also

So blessed to have been able to see all of that and do all those amazing things and now have this perspective of the world. But also I have to be very careful to use that as the lens through which I view the world all the time because it doesn't fit most of the scenarios.

Sam Penny (1:13:54)
You

have one bloody wise friend. ⁓ But more importantly, did you fix your mum's aircon?

Lachie Smart (1:14:01)
We got it. ⁓

Sam Penny (1:14:06)
How do you apply bravery in your everyday life or business? How does that show up or leadership?

Lachie Smart (1:14:12)
It's a good question. mean, bravery specifically is being able to take action even in the case of having fear.

And I love, as I said before, it's masochistic, but I love that feeling of a little bit of tension inside. Like, this could be scary. This puts me on edge a little bit because for me, that voluntary approach to discomfort often is coupled with really good feelings in or after the moment. There's a lot of literature around this.

in a book called dopamine nation and others, where it talks about the voluntary approach to discomfort actually producing much better results in your endocrine system, things like dopamine and good feelings that comes as a result after. But in the moment, it sucks. And so I always remind myself that it's good to feel that little bit of edge, something that's a bit sharp and a bit uncomfortable, whether it's

finishing your nice luxurious hot warm shower in the morning with 20 seconds of blasting cold or if you have so jumping in an ice bath or whatever it might be, just those little bits where it sucks. And then that gives a lot of perspective to when it's good because if you only ever chase comfort and you only ever experienced the good feelings, ⁓ they don't seem good anymore because you've got nothing to compare them to. It's the discomfort, it's the sucky feelings, it's the pain. ⁓

It's the bad times. They're the only things that make the good times good because in the absence of one, you can't have the other. Otherwise, it just becomes a numb feeling of always being the same.

Sam Penny (1:15:49)
Yeah, exactly. It's that yin and yang, isn't it? We need the low points to appreciate the highs. Now, Lachie, not everyone listening is going to fly solo around the world. And bravery isn't just for pilots. So what do you think is one small act of bravery anyone can take tomorrow?

Lachie Smart (1:15:59)
Hope not.

a voluntary approach to discomfort. As I said, it doesn't have to be a big thing.

But just do one thing that is outside the comfort zone. Because ⁓ as I discovered during the flight and have reinforced many, many times since is that capability, that confidence, that bravery is built over time. So start, there's no reason to not start today. It doesn't have to be flying around the world. It doesn't have to be starting a business or taking some big risk. Just do something small that you're not used to doing. And I think that's a brilliant, brilliant first step.

for what I encourage a lot of young people to do now with the presentations that we do in universities and schools is just take a moment to get off a digital device and be bored. And whilst that might sound really stupid, it is uncomfortable to be bored these days. There is very, very little time where people are left looking out a window or daydreaming because anytime we have the slightest feeling of discomfort, which is boredom, we pick up a device and we quell that.

So I think a very, very good first step, if you don't already have one in mind, ⁓ is to get off socials for just a bit. I'm not saying go cold turkey, because you probably will fail like I have and many others have along the way because it's a very addictive behavior, but just get off it for a little bit. Take half an hour where you are doing nothing. Stare out a window, go for a walk. Don't have music in, don't have a podcast you're listening to, except for this one. Listen, this is a good one.

But just take the time to be bored. It'll be uncomfortable. It'll probably make you a little bit anxious. But that's a good thing. That's your brain now starting to take into I can deal with discomfort and I'm going to do good things.

Sam Penny (1:17:49)
So then how do you start

when fear feels bigger than the dream?

Lachie Smart (1:17:53)
when fear feels bigger than the dream. I just think it's like the old saying of how do you eat an elephant one bite at a time. You don't have to know the full picture, but you have to take the first step. And that step can't just be the piece of paper that your plan goes on to. It's safe. Planning is a safe activity because there is no risk when it's just a pen and a paper or a laptop. When it becomes risky is when you talk to someone about it or when you start doing the thing. And so

I think that is really the trick is to take the first step, tell someone about your ambition because at least you've got someone to keep you accountable that you're going to keep going then.

Sam Penny (1:18:30)
So someone

listening right now thinks that they can't, what would you tell them in that very moment?

Lachie Smart (1:18:37)
Just try and articulate to someone why you can't because I can almost guarantee that in the process of explaining why you can't do something, either you or that person is going to give you the answer that you can. There are very, very few things that people are incapable of doing in today's Very few. Sure. Maybe you can't sprout wings and fly straight off your feet, but I mean,

in 100 years and 120 years we've gone from very few people ever leaving the ground in a balloon through to now almost every person in developed nations has been on an airplane. That's a pretty short period of time with a lot of effort and ambition that's gone into something. People would have told you you were crazy 100 years ago if you said this was a mainstream thing.

I'm not saying it's going to be something that takes you 100 years, but a lot of things are capable. Humans are absolutely incredible species that were able to turn an idea into reality actually very quickly. So don't believe those thoughts in your head that you can't do it because taking that first step, promise you, you'll get there.

Sam Penny (1:19:37)
All right, Lucky, I always love to end these conversations with the Brave Five. It's rapid fire, five questions. Basically, the first thing that comes into your mind, are you ready? All right, the most unexpected takeaway from your journey.

Lachie Smart (1:19:46)
This could be dangerous. Go, let's do it.

⁓ I think it's that one of the contexts of the experience shapes the way that you view the world. Don't be so arrogant as to think that everybody sees the world the way that you do.

Sam Penny (1:20:01)
All right, the first emotion you felt after achieving your goal.

Lachie Smart (1:20:05)
relief.

Sam Penny (1:20:05)
What was one thing that you wish you knew before you started?

Lachie Smart (1:20:10)
that's a tricky one. I think the fact that if I knew how many times I was going to quit, that I might have been better prepared for it. But I think now that I've given you that answer at the same time, if I knew how many times I thought I was going to quit, maybe I would have quit earlier. So I think that youthful naivety was a blessing in disguise.

Sam Penny (1:20:30)
All right, what's a habit or a mindset that really does make the biggest difference for you?

Lachie Smart (1:20:35)
I think it comes down to discomfort. As I saying before, just get comfortable with being uncomfortable. And again, you don't have to go and do, I'm not standing on some moral, moral high ground saying I've got it all figured out. But if there's one thing I am pretty confident in, it's that very few good things happen without you doing something uncomfortable first. So stop chasing that feeling of comfort. Stop needing to get your eight hours of sleep. Eight hours of sleep is not meaning that you can't function as a human. Maybe you need to sacrifice a couple of hours sleep.

a night to do something better. Or maybe you don't, maybe you can do it by sacrificing other things, but don't use the comfortable excuses around you to be the reason to not try. I mean, there's a lot of things you can do, but you're never going to do them while you're sitting on your phone scrolling Instagram.

Sam Penny (1:21:22)
All right, now

this was such an amazing journey, Lachie. What was the best advice you ever received during that journey?

Lachie Smart (1:21:30)
best advice was probably

was probably don't forget the people that got you here. And that was for multiple reasons. One was was gratitude. And then my grandma told me this. One was just the fact that, you know, those people are the reason that I was able to do this. But the second reason to that was, there was a lot of people way smarter than I was that I am that

were the reason I was able to get through most of this. And if I had have gone into it thinking this is all about me and it's all my trip and I'm the solo pilot and I'm the best in the world, I would have died for sure. And there was a lot of times where we came close and it was only the people around me who were gracious enough to give me their knowledge and mentor me through this. They were the only reason I was able to get through this thing safely and not crash the aircraft or have any of the other issues that we very much came close to.

Sam Penny (1:22:25)
Lachie your story reminds us that bravery isn't the absence of fear. It's what you do when fear is right there in the cockpit with you. At 15, he told his mom he was going to fly around the world. People laughed, sponsors said no. Even he doubted himself, but he kept showing up. Three years later at 18,

He faced down storms over the Pacific, the fatigue of 13 hour flights and a moment in Indonesia when trusting himself over authorities saved his life. Bravery wasn't in the record that he broke. It was in the choice to keep flying when doubt and danger pressed hardest. Maybe you'll never cross the Pacific in a single engine plane, but we all face our own oceans. The business you've been putting off, the bold conversation you're scared to have.

the dream that feels too far away. The question isn't whether you could do what Lachie did. The question is, will you take your next step even when it feels impossible? Now, Lachie, for those listening who want to follow your journey, hear you speak or connect with your work today, where's the best place for them to find you?

Lachie Smart (1:23:32)
I look the best place we can probably get in touch is LinkedIn or, or on the socials, but also just head to the website. It's just lachiesmart.com. And in there, there's ways to get in touch and see a little bit more about what we do.

Sam Penny (1:23:43)
Brilliant. Thanks, Lachie. And I'll make sure that I pop all of those links into the show notes. And if this conversation has sparked something in you, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with a friend, a colleague, someone who needs a reminder that ordinary people can say yes to the impossible. Make sure you subscribe so you never miss the next story of bravery because bravery spreads and your share might just spark someone else's first step. I'm Sam Penny and this is Why Do You Think You Could Do That? Until next time.

Keep saying yes to the impossible.