A 19-year-old American content creator who was trying to fly solo to all seven continents was detained by the Chilean authorities this week after they said he had landed his plane on an island off Antarctica without authorization.
The teenager, Ethan Guo, said in an interview on Thursday that he was being housed at a Chilean base on King George Island, roughly 75 miles off the coast of Antarctica, as the case against him proceeds.
Chilean officials said on Thursday that although Mr. Guo had initially been detained, he was now free to leave the island as long as he remained in Chile until his case is resolved.
Mr. Guo had been documenting his journey around the world on TikTok, where he has more than 329,000 followers, and Instagram, where he has about 1.3 million followers.
Mr. Guo, who obtained his pilot’s license at 17, was aiming to become the first person to fly solo in a small aircraft to all seven continents, according to his website, and was hoping to raise $1 million for cancer research.
Antarctica was the only continent where he had yet to land, he said. On Saturday at about 5:30 a.m., he took off from Punta Arenas, a city near the southern tip of Chile, with a flight plan indicating that he was going to fly over the city and land again in Punta Arenas, prosecutors said.
But without notifying aviation authorities, Mr. Guo flew his Cessna 182Q across the Southern Ocean and landed at a Chilean airstrip on King George Island at about 11:30 a.m., prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said that Mr. Guo had submitted “false flight plan data” and that when he deviated from that plan, aviation officials declared that his Cessna had been “lost.” They say his actions violated Chilean aviation regulations and jeopardized public safety.
“This could have been a tragedy,” Cristian Crisosto Rifo, a Chilean prosecutor, said on a radio show this week, arguing that Mr. Guo’s plane could have crashed into another plane.
Mr. Guo said he had left Punta Arenas with an approved plan to fly to Ushuaia, on the southern tip of Argentina.
“Due to weather conditions and in order to ensure my safety, I had to divert to” a Chilean airstrip on King George Island, he said. The airstrip is public, he said.
“I have instructed my lawyers to express my full willingness to cooperate with the prompt clarification of the facts,” Mr. Guo said. “It’s not my intention to commit any violation of Chilean law, and I hope to soon continue my crusade in the fight against cancer.”
Mr. Guo’s Chilean lawyer, Karina Ulloa, did not immediately respond to emails on Thursday.
Prosecutors said that the investigation into his flight was continuing and that a hearing in Punta Arenas had been scheduled for Aug. 11 as they “explore an alternative outcome to the case.”
“For the time being, he remains at President Eduardo Frei Montalva Base in Antarctica, but he is not deprived of his liberty,” Iván Stipicic Mackenney, a Chilean court spokesman, said in an email on Thursday. “He simply has nowhere else to go because of the inherent isolation of the territory.”
As a practical matter, Mr. Guo may not be able to leave the island until August, when a Chilean Air Force plane may fly to the Chilean mainland, Mr. Stipicic said. There is no regular commercial airline service to the island until the end of winter in the Southern Hemisphere, he said.
Asked how he was faring on the island, Mr. Guo said in a message on WhatsApp that he “could be better.” He said he had asked the Chilean authorities to approve a plan that would allow him to fly to Punta Arenas as soon as Sunday.
“As of now, we don’t know a way” to leave, Mr. Guo said, adding that he was “still figuring it out.”
Michael Levenson covers breaking news for The Times from New York.
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