First in History, Airbus Planes Land in Antarctica

Jakarta, CNN Indonesia —

For the first time in history, an Airbus A340 aircraft has successfully landed in Antartika.

Hi Fly, an airline company, was behind the flight made on Tuesday (2/11).

Hi Fly 801 took off from Cape Town, South Africa.

The plane was commissioned by Wolf’s Fang, a luxury adventure camp on the world’s southernmost continent, and brought much-needed supplies to the resort.

Wolf’s Fang is a new project from the Antarctic tourism company White Desert.

The crew of Hi Fly 801 (and its return trip to Cape Town with Hi Fly 802) was led by Captain Carlos Mirpuri, who is also vice president of Hi Fly.

Overall, the round-trip flight, plus a short stop in Antarctica to unload cargo, took about three hours and covered a distance of 2,500 nautical miles.

The blue ice runway on the Wolf’s Fang property is designated a C Level airport, although it’s not technically an airport.

That means only highly specialized crews can fly there due to the challenging conditions.

“The colder the better,” Mipuri explained in his captain’s log.

“Grooving is carved along the runway with special equipment, and after cleaning and carving we get adequate braking coefficients; the runway is 3,000 meters long, landing and stopping such a heavy A340 at that airfield won’t be a problem.”

This article continues to the next page…