An Airbus A340 plane from the Hi Fly company took off from Cape Town, South Africa, on November 2 and landed, five and a half hours later, on an ice runway in Antarctica, in what constitutes the first landing of a spacecraft. of such size on the white continent. Hi Fly is a Portuguese boutique aviation company, whose main activity consists of chartering aircraft with crew, insurance, maintenance and logistics included. The Antarctic flight was commissioned by luxury adventure tourism firm Wolf's Fang to transport supplies for its high-end “White Desert” Antarctic tourism project. Captain Carlos Mirpuri, vice president of the airline, was in charge of the crew and operations of the two flights, Hi Fly 801, and the return to Cape Town, Hi Fly 802. Each journey of 2,500 nautical miles It lasts between five and five and a half hours .
The Airbus, in its different versions, can transport between 375 and 440 passengers, and has a length that goes from 59.39 meters, in its early models, to 75.3 meters in its 600 series, which made it until 2011 on the longest commercial plane in the world. Carved ice Although it is not technically an airport, the blue ice rink at Wolf's Fang is classified as a “level C airport,” where only crews highly trained for such extreme conditions can operate. The ice on the 3,000 meter track is cleaned and “carved” by special equipment, until what is called an adequate braking coefficient is achieved.
Today there is no airport in Antarctica, although there are about 50 landing strips. The Wolf's Fang track and camp, called Whichaway, covers approximately one hectare in Schirmacher Oasis, Queen Maud Land. 4 km to the east is the Maitri base in India. Since 2005, the tourist company has been chartering flights with Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft from the South African company The Antarctic Company to the Novolázarevskaya airfield. From there he transported tourists in 4x4 vehicles. Further back in time, since 2017, they have landed on the new runway mainly with a Gulfstream G550 aircraft or sometimes a Falcon 900LX. From there they fly by DHC-6 Twin Otter or Basler BT-67 to Novolázarevskaya (132 km away), and then by ice vehicles to Whichaway, 9 km away. The Russian crew in Antarctica has the most experience and initiative in Antarctic flights.
Between 2019 and 2020, it carried out half a dozen test flights on a 914-meter-long blue ice runway, with wide-body aircraft. The first landing of an Airbus A340 on an ice runway opens up great future expectations not only for the logistics of luxury Antarctic tourism, but also for the development of all types of activities in the southernmost and most unexplored continent on Earth.
Sources: CNN https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2021/11/23/avion-airbus-a340-aterriza-antartida-trax/
Simple Flying https://simpleflying.com/gulfstream-550-antarctica/
White Desert https://white-desert.com/adventures/south-pole-emperors/
RT https://actualidad.rt.com/actualidad/411409-airbus-aterrizar-antartida-primera-vez-historia
