What was intended as a fundraising mission for cancer research, has become a nightmare for Asian-U.S. pilot and teen influencer Ethan Guo, who has been stuck since June in Antarctica, where he landed clandestinely after allegedly providing false data to Chileans authorities about his flight plan.
Guo, who has more than 1.4 million followers on Instagram, was charged with handing false information to ground control and landing without authorization in the Chilean Antarctic territory on June 28.
After he spent six weeks at a military base on the continent, the Guarantee Court of Punta Arenas, a small town in Chile’s southernmost Patagonia region, closed the case against the young pilot on Monday.
Judge Franco Reyes Pozo approved an agreement between his lawyers and the prosecutor’s office for the influencer, requiring him to pay a $30,000 donation to a children’s cancer foundation within 30 days to avoid a trial.
He must also leave the country as soon as conditions allow and is prohibited from re-entering Chilean territory for three years.
Guo has been traveling and documenting on Instagram his solo flights across all seven continents to raise up to $1 million for cancer research and awareness through St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
But his latest adventure took a dark turn in June, when the American pilot defied Chile's Aeronautical Code by providing authorities with “false flight plan data” and jeopardizing “air traffic safety, leading authorities to declare that the aircraft went missing”, the court said on Monday in a statement.
AP Video shot by Claudio Monge & Mauricio Cuevas