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Aug 14, 2025  |  
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Michael Levenson


NextImg:U.S. Pilot Stranded in Antarctica Says It’s ‘Isolating and Lonely’

Breakfast consists of bread and a teaspoon of butter. For lunch and dinner, it’s beans, lentil soup or pasta. Home is a single room in a Chilean air force barracks, with a spotty Wi-Fi connection. He has only been outside, he said, for an hour over the last six weeks, and he has lost 20 pounds.

Ethan Guo, a 20-year-old American pilot and content creator, said on Wednesday that he has been effectively trapped at a Chilean base on King George Island off Antarctica since June 28, when the Chilean authorities detained him there and accused him of landing his single-engine Cessna there without authorization.

This week, a Chilean judge approved a deal in which prosecutors agreed to dismiss the case against Mr. Guo if he pays $30,000 to a children’s cancer charity and does not re-enter Chile for the next three years. But the central question remains: How will Mr. Guo get off King George Island, roughly 75 miles off the coast of Antarctica?

It is winter in the Southern Hemisphere, and the island is a crusted, windswept landscape of ice and snow. Temperatures have been well below freezing, with frequent snow showers. Chilean officials said it would be unsafe for Mr. Guo to fly to South America over the Drake Passage, the treacherous body of water between Chile and Antarctica known for rough weather and poor visibility. A Chilean air force plane crashed over the Drake Passage in 2019, killing 38 people.

Chilean officials have said that commercial airline service to the island will not resume until winter ends.

In a statement on Wednesday, Chile’s aviation authority said that Mr. Guo was free to leave the island as soon as he could finance a trip on a Chilean ship or arrange a flight to Punta Arenas, on the southern tip of Chile.


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