Teen breaks record to become Ireland’s youngest glider

There aren’t many 14-year-olds who get to be launched 600m into the sky by their mother, so Harry Houlihan must be quite unique.

The teenager, from Hollywood in Co Wicklow, became the country’s youngest ever glider after he completed his first solo flight in the engineless aircraft over Co Derry last Saturday.

A flying fanatic who is the son of two flying fanatics, Harry had clocked up 25 hours of in-flight instruction before taking to the skies solo for the first time when he glided over the Ulster Gliding Club in Bellarena, Co. Derry.

Thanks to new European Aviation Safety Agency regulations introduced last year, the minimum age for solo flying in gliders fell from 16 to 14 years of age. Thanks to his solo flight at the weekend Harry has set a new Irish record as the first youngster to fly solo at the age of 14.

He was trained by his father, John, and towed to 600m in the air by his mother, Olive, who is the only female tug pilot in the country.

After that he was flying solo, with John watching nervously from the ground as Harry completed a number of set flight tasks, and after 20 minutes concluded his maiden solo voyage with “the most magnificent landing”.

“It is one of my best achievements, teaching my child to fly,” John said.

Harry is a third-year student at Naas CBS and he will certainly have a few stories to tell his classmates when school resumes.

He began training a year ago in a dual-control glider with controls both in the front and the rear of the aircraft.

The family are well known in the gliding scene on both sides of the border and John admitted Harry “has spent his life in airfields. It is quite a skilled sport because you do not have an engine to keep you in the sky — you have to rely on nature.”

John and Olive first met on a windy airfield — “it was love at first sight” — so it is perhaps no surprise that Harry has picked up the baton, particularly when you consider he was first carried in a glider at the age of three.

Harry’s uncle, Kevin, also set an Irish record earlier this year when he flew his glider for over seven and a half hours, covering in excess of 500km.

“He would like to be a pilot,” John said of Ireland’s youngest solo glider. “He mentioned flying with the air corps when he finishes school.”

As for Harry: “That’s the most exciting thing I have ever done and it’s much better without an instructor sitting behind you.”