Even on a good day, polar flying is never simple
By Jack Williams, USATODAY.com The daring April 24-25, 2001 flight to rescue an ill doctor at the South Pole focused the world's attention the dangers of polar flying. |
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While
the hazards of that flight exceeded those of normal travel in Antarctica, no
one would ever call flying there routine, even in the summer when the sun is
up 24 hours a day and the weather is on its best behavior. Pilots
and other members of flight crews have to always be ready to land on ice they
can't see because blowing snow has created a "white out." Everyone
who boards a plane to go to Antarctica or to go from one place to another on
the continent has to be dressed to survive the cold and prepared to use the
survival equipment all planes carry. Most
people taking part in the National Science Foundation's U.S. Antarctic
Program go there from Christchurch, New Zealand. The 2,400-mile flight to the
McMurdo Station is just about as long as a flight from Portland, Ore., to
Jacksonville, Fla., but distance is about the only thing it has in common
with a northwest to southeast flight across the USA. An
hour or so after an airplane is past the southern tip of New Zealand, it's
over the storm-tossed, cold Southern Ocean for all but the last 700 or so
miles. This last leg is over Antarctica's unpopulated ice. There's no place
to land and no place making regular reports of weather along the route. For
most of the October into February Antarctic research season, flights are on
LC-130s, which are ski-equipped versions of the C-130 turboprop transports,
which take about eight hours to fly to McMurdo. The New York Air National
Guard's 109th Airlift Wing, which took over all Antarctic flying from the
Navy in February 1999, flies the LC-130s to and from Antarctica and between
stations on the continent During
the Northern Hemisphere summer, the 109th supports National Science
Foundation projects in the Arctic, especially in Greenland. The 109th also
trains at the Raven Skiway, an abandoned Cold War radar warning station, on
Greenland's ice sheet. About
half way through the journey, the airplane reaches the point of safe return.
Up to now, the pilots had the option of turning back to Christchurch. Once
past the point of safe return, the airplane is going to land — or crash — in
Antarctica because there isn't enough fuel to return to New Zealand. If
the weather outlook is for conditions that would make landing at McMurdo
unsafe, the flight will "boomerang;" that is, turn around and
return to New Zealand before reaching the point of safe return. When this
happens, passengers spend eight or more hours on an anything-but-luxurious
LC-130 only to end up back in Christchurch. If
an airplane arrives at McMurdo to find the weather unsuitable for landing,
the first choice is to fly to a field camp or even the South Pole, 850 miles
away. Both would offer groomed skiways (snow runways) marked with flags,
on-site weather observations, warm buildings to shelter the plane's crew and
passengers, and a galley with cooks who'd be happy to feed their unexpected
guests. But,
if the airplane doesn't have fuel to reach either place or the weather is too
bad there also, the only choice is a "whiteout landing," Col.
Graham Pritchard, who retired in 2000 as commanding officer of the 109th,
says "the whiteout landing procedure allows us to safely put the
airplane down on the surface even under zero-zero weather," that is zero
visibility and zero ceiling. The
whiteout landing area is several square miles of the Ross Ice Shelf near
McMurdo that's been surveyed and found to be free of crevasses and also to be
relatively smooth. Pritchard
says that during a whiteout landing: •
The navigator makes sure the airplane goes to the correct location and that
the wind doesn't push it out of the area. •
The pilot lines the airplane up into the wind and begins descending at a
steady rate of 200 feet per minute. The pilot "keeps the plane
stabilized with the wings level and lets it fly down and settle on the
snow." •
The copilot "backs up pilot on instruments and watches the rate of
descent." •
The flight engineer, who sits between the pilot and copilot, monitors all the
aircraft systems; •
The loadmasters, like the passengers, "are holding on tight and are
strapped in good and snug." Pritchard
says that the airplane's radar altimeter "shows you within a couple of
feet when you're about to touch down. It's no great surprise, and yet, that
first moment when the skis touch does surprise you no matter what. The pilot
has to be very careful not to jerk the yoke back when you feel the skis touch
down. It's really hard not to jerk the yoke back and pull yourself back into
the air." If
the pilot does pull back, the airplane will zoom up, and then probably come
down hard. It could even begin bouncing across the snow. Although
he, like all Antarctic pilots, regularly practiced making whiteout landings,
Pritchard says he never had to make a real one in about 30 years of flying
LC-130s in the Arctic and Antarctic. In
December 1997, however, two Navy LC-130s made whiteout landings at McMurdo,
one 10 minutes after the other. One had arrived from Christchurch, the other
from the South Pole. In the past, crews and passengers aboard an airplane
that's made a whiteout landing might have to wait hours until visibility was
good enough for vehicles reach the airplane and begin taking the passengers
and crew to shelter. But
after the December 1997 landing, members of the McMurdo Search and Rescue
Team, in tracked vehicles equipped with global positioning satellite
navigation systems and radar, quickly located the airplanes and began
ferrying passengers to shelter. Even with the navigation system and radar,
however, they needed to make several trips meant the last of the passengers
didn't reach shelter until six hours after the airplane landed. This
is why passengers struggle into long underwear, polar fleece jackets and
pants, wind pants, insulated boots, and parkas in 70-degree temperatures in
Christchurch before boarding an airplane for Antarctica. They might need this
clothing if the weather forces their airplane to land somewhere other than
their destination. (This story was originally written in January 1999 based on the writer's experiences in Antarctica. It was updated, with changes in 2001 and again in 2004.) |