Do any of you think that one day an airline would be able to fly an airplane from o say ATL to Antarctica full of pax and land ona suitable runway???
No, not at lease until the do-gooder environmentalists get out of the picture.
Not in the foreseeable future as that would require commercial development that is forbidden by the international treaty among the 26 nations regulating the use of Antarctica.
Besides the fact that there are no paved runways there are no “hotels” nor any type of housing for tourists on Antarctica and visitors can only arrive by ship which they live aboard during their stay.
The tourist flights from Australia, and formerly from New Zealand, are overflights only and do not land. Air New Zealand ceased tourist flights in 1979 after the crash of ANZ Flight 901 on Mount Erebus.
Let the airliners here do there job here with Global warming and I’m sure we’ll all be living in Antarctica soon.
But in all seriousness, since the International community has agreed that the only use for Antarctica will be for research with a finite number of people on the ground / ice, and flying not very feasable for half the year, I doubt an " Airline" would be much interested in Antarctica.
Charters are it for now. Its funny how all these " do rights " want to fly to Antarctica to see a prestine environment, and in doing so are contributing to its ultimate demise.
Have to fly there with Brian Dennehy - the beer-totin’ bush pilot in Disney’s “Never Cry Wolf.”
I’m sure if they ever got passenger service it would be on a smaller plane from Tierra del Fuego or New Zealand, it would probably be like a tour company.
There’s actually already an airline flying charters from Tierra del Fuego to the Antarctic with charters.
My boyfriend is currently in Antarctica. They flew from North America to New Zealand on Qantas, then took a C-17 from Christchurch, New Zealand to McMurdo Research Station in Antarctica.
He claims it’s much faster and comfortable than in previous years, when they’ve made the trip on a C-130.
I’ve heard that C-5’s periodically fly there. Now THAT would be a fun ride.
It’s difficult to believe that there’s such a need for heavy-lift capability at Antarctica… something that the C-17 is well equipped to handle… but for cargo-drop missions, I suppose it’s possible that C-5s have made the trip.
One of the guys I work with was a former C130 Navy pilot that flew missions to the South Pole. He has a book too. Flying Upside Down - True Tales of an Antarctic Pilot
There’s a lot of stuff going down there. You need to fly in everything. Once you total everything up, it begins to way quite a bit.
Check out the Raytheon Polar Services Company web site - very interesting.