A Portuguese charter airline (Hi Fly) has made history by landing the first Airbus A340
widebody aircraft in Antarctica.
The aircraft took off from Cape Town and landed on a runway carved out of blue ice glacier. It was carrying supplies for an adventure camp named Wolf’s Fang.
It took 9H-SOL around 5 hours to travel the 2,800 nautical miles or 4,630 kilometres to Wolf’s Fang Runway (WFR) in the northern region of Antarctica.
Wolf’s Fang Runway is 3,000 metres long, and 60 metres wide, with aircraft landing on hard ice that’s around 1.4 kilometres deep.
Grooves are carved into the 10,000ft runway and a specially-equipped car covers the length of the strip to check how icy the track is before the jet arrives.
The first ever flight to Antarctica was a Lockheed Vega 1 monoplane in 1928, piloted by George Hubert Wilkins, an Australian military pilot.
All images credit: Hi Fly
