“He is in good spirits and is looking forward to returning to the US as soon as possible,” Croft said.
Guo’s release came nearly a month after a Chilean judge approved a deal to dismiss his case under the conditions that Guo pay US$30,000 ($51,000) to a children’s cancer charity and that he does not re-enter the country for three years.
Croft said that Guo was not paying any penalty or fine, nor making any admission of guilt, and that as a condition of the agreement, he would make a donation to the Chilean charity Fundacion Nuestros Hijos.
Guo said he was most recently living in Florida until he began his journey.
Guo had been chronicling his trip around the world on TikTok, where he has more than 655,000 followers, and on Instagram, where he has 1.4 million followers.
He obtained his pilot’s licence at 17 and sought to fly solo in a small aircraft to all seven continents in order to raise funds for cancer research, according to his website. He had set a goal to raise US$1 million.
On his social media accounts, Guo shared stories of flying to different cities and meeting cancer patients. He said his mission was inspired by a cousin with stage four blood cancer.
In an interview last month, Guo said that Antarctica was the only continent where he had not landed.
But Guo did not alert aviation officials when he flew his Cessna 182Q across the Southern Ocean and landed at a Chilean airstrip on King George Island, according to prosecutors.
Authorities said that he landed there without permission and that he had submitted “false flight plan data”. Prosecutors accused him of violating Chilean aviation regulations and jeopardising public safety.
Prosecutors said last month that they were investigating his flight and were trying to “explore an alternative outcome to the case”.
While his case was being worked out, a single room in a Chilean Air Force barracks with unreliable Wi-Fi became his temporary home.
He survived by eating breakfasts of bread and a teaspoon of butter, and lunches and dinners that included beans, lentil soup, and pasta. Guo said last month that he had lost 20 pounds (9kg).
A Chilean judge approved a deal last month to dismiss the case after Guo’s lawyers provided prosecutors with flight records, air traffic control recordings, and other evidence to support Guo’s account.
Guo’s immediate plan was to return to the US, according to Croft. He said his office was working with Chilean authorities to arrange for another authorised pilot to fly Guo’s plane from Antarctica back to the mainland.
Once that happens, Guo said, “I look forward to resuming my global flight against cancer.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
Written by: Johnny Diaz
©2025 THE NEW YORK TIMES
