Well this could be the coolest flight ever …
Icelandair 767 flies to Antarctica via Cape Town
An Icelandair Boeing 767-300 is currently en route from Iceland to Antarctica via South Africa. As reported by @gudmegillThe 767 has flight number FI1010 and is operated by a 20 year old aircraft with the registration code TF-ISN.
According to reports:
- This Icelandair 767 has a crew of 20, including six pilots, 13 flight attendants and a mechanic
- The plane first flies to Cape Town to pick up Norwegian scientists and then continues to the Troll Research Station in Antarctica, where it will land on a runway with blue ice
- The total one-way trip will be approximately 10,000 miles – the flight from Iceland to South Africa is ~ 7,100 miles and the flight from South Africa to Antarctica is ~ 2,700 miles
- Almost as impressive as the flight to Antarctica itself is that the flight from Keflavik to Cape Town is non-stop as it has to be one of the longest 767 flights ever. The plane really has to be empty to fly this non-stop
This isn’t even Icelandair’s first flight to Antarctica – in 2015 Icelandair became the first commercial airline to land a plane on a runway with blue ice in Antarctica as the airline operated a flight to Union Glacier. This flight had its origin in Chile.
Even cooler than Lufthansa’s Falkland Islands?
A few weeks ago Lufthansa made headlines for its flight to the Falkland Islands, which was also intended to transport people (mostly) to Antarctica:
- Lufthansa took an Airbus A350-900 on a trip from Hamburg to Mount Pleasant on the Falkland Islands in Munich. The outbound flight was Lufthansa’s longest non-stop flight of all time
- The aim was to transport scientists and crews boarding or disembarking the Polarstern research vessel to the Antarctic
- While these trips would have been through South Africa in the past, due to concerns about the coronavirus in South Africa at the time, this trip was through the Falkland Islands (although the situation there has improved significantly).
While I thought the flight was ridiculously cool, Icelandair beat Lufthansa here – landing right on an ice rink in Antarctica is undoubtedly cooler.
Bottom line
An Icelandair 767 is currently en route from Iceland to Antarctica, where the airline will land on a runway with blue ice. This has to be one of the coolest flights ever made by an airliner.
Do you think this Icelandair flight is as cool as I do?
