Icelandair, the home airline of Iceland and a very northern airline, had a flight make its way last week to the other arctic region. This was a flight to pick up research scientists that were in Antarctica and has since made its way back to the Northern Hemisphere.
Icelandair Flies to Antarctica and Back
The flight departed from Iceland on Wednesday and landed on the White Continent on Friday after a stop in Cape Town, South Africa. That meant that the Boeing 767 traveled a distance of just over 7,000 miles, taking 14 hours to do so. After a stop there, they continued on to an ice landing in Antarctica at the Troll Research Center.
The purpose of the trip was to bring scientists to the research center and then picking up research scientists that were there. From Antarctica, they made another stop in Cape Town (where they were able to pick up the crew that had been resting there) and made the long flight to Norway to drop off their passengers.
This impressive trip was done with a crew of 20, six of them being pilots. The landing was at Princess Martha Coast, a stop that lasted two hours while dropping off and picking up their passengers. The weather would have been around 0 degrees (F) that day.
Here is a great Tweet from Flight Radar 24 that shows some of the pics as well as the flight information about this flight.
We have received some photos of the @Icelandair 767 visit to Troll Research Station in Antarctica earlier this week.https://t.co/e333XhqXtR
📷 Sven Lidström, Norsk Polarinstitutt pic.twitter.com/o8M96zX5q6
— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) February 28, 2021
Believe it or not, this was not the first Icelandair flight to Antarctica. They had a 757 that flew there back in 2015 and landed on yet another ice runway on the continent.
This epic journey ended yesterday afternoon as the flight landed back in Iceland.
Featured image courtesy of Icelandair
