The journey from Cape Town to the White Continent is 2,500 nautical miles and takes five hours each way. The A340 is the first plane to land on an ice runway.
The A340-313HGW has a maximum take-off weight of 275 tons. The A340 is ideal for this type of remote operation because of its range and 4 engine redundancy.
The first A340 to land is in Antarctica.
The story was written by Captain Carlos Mirpuri.
The crew left the hotel at 5 am local. It took 30 minutes to get to the airport. We arrived at the aircraft at 6 am with two hours left to our STD, after we had processed through the airport for 30 minutes.
When we arrived at the airfield, the engineers and Ground Operations staff had left the hotel an hour earlier. The first flight of the season was expected to have 23 passengers, all staff from the customer, and most of the ground support equipment that we would need in WFR was in our cargo compartments. The first two sorties are for the purpose of setting up the operation down in Antarctica.
We would take 5h10m on the way down and 5h20m on the return. We planned for a 3h turn around time in WFR as this was the first flight with limited support on the ground.
It would be a long day for the crew, but the excitement of participating in a unique event stood above anything else.
The crew is briefed on arriving at the aircraft. This is not just another flight, there are specificities related to this very remote operation we would be conducting, the harsh environment we would face, and the need to ensure proper protective clothing would be on board.
I and my crew were checking the aircraft, loading the route into the navigation computers, and giving the details of our departure while cabin checks and catering loading was going on.
Passengers arrived 20 minutes before the STD. We pushed back from the gate at 8 am. On-time. Every time. The Motto is at Hi Fly.
Cape Town to Wolf's Fang Runway.
We lined up on runway one but had to pause for a moment before launching, I spotted birds over the runway and asked the tower to scare them out, they moved out of the way. We don't want a bird strike or engine damage on a flight. We were airborne at 8:19 am. There is a beautiful morning in Cape Town.
There isn't any fuel in WFR. We carried 77 tons of fuel. A340-313HGW has a maximum take-off weight of 275 tons.
The airplane is ideal for this type of mission because of its 4 engines' redundancy and long-range.
The route to WFR was almost direct after the instrument departure procedure clearance was issued. We were handed over to Johannesburg through the CPDLC, avoiding the tiring and noisy long-range communication that has been around for 50 years. We lost the data link connection 250 miles before WFR. A person with a handheld portable radio that looks after the runway is not an air traffic control. They look great for their condition.
True heading is used as a reference for polar navigation techniques south of 65 degrees.
A plot chart is used to keep us on course. During the route we receive via ACARS, we get frequent weather reports from WFR. The guys at WFR use an Iridium Satphone to communicate from that part of the Globe. When the weather meets our requirements, we only launch to Antarctica. When you travel to the end of the world, you need to be sure that the weather is in line with the forecast.
They are supposed to pass us runway friction reports when they close to the top of our descent. The length of the runway is measured by a car every 500 meters. We started our descent because the frictions were all above what we considered minimum.
We would be landing at a maximum landing weight of 190 tons if we carried fuel to cover both ways. One can easily understand that the first-ever landing of an A340 in blue ice attracted a lot of attention and anxiety. The front office was confident that they had done their homework.
The success of our first landing is a testament to the hard work of our operations department.
A visit to WFR was performed by the captain of the business jet carrying scientists. This is a C category airport, and only the first flight will be observed by the crew before they operate.
The ice runway is blue.
A runway made of ice. It can hold an airplane. Its depth is over a mile of hard air-free ice. The cooler is the better. The runway is 3000 meters long, and after cleaning and carving, we get an adequate braking coefficient, which would allow us to land an A340 on that airfield. It was the first time an A340 had landed in blue ice.
There is a blue ice runway.
Proper eyewear helps you adjust your eyes between the outside view and the instruments. Extra callouts are usually made by the non-flying pilot in the late stages of the approach.
It's not easy to spot the runway, but we have to see it at one point because there are no navigation aids in WFR.
We started configuring flaps and landing gear 10 miles before the runway after we spotted the runway alignment. It's difficult to make a good height judgment because of the lack of visual glide slope guidance and the fact that the runway is in the middle of a white desert.
In cold weather, the altimeters need to be adjusted. All this was accounted for. We flew a textbook approach to the landing, and the aircraft performed as planned. I could hear a round of applause from the cabin when we reached taxi speed. We were happy. We were writing history.
The time it took to get to the airport was much less than the 3 hours that were planned. Our Flight ops and ground ops did a great job. A winning team. For better confidence in the system put in place, we venture outside, greeted people, saw details and places of the runway, and saw the system put in place. It looks like operations to and from Antarctica are going to go well.
The return flight was also calm. The customer and the customer were both happy. The goals for this flight had been met. The reporter who registered the event was Marc Bow.
