There are short runways, bumpy runways and runways known to be wiped out by crosswinds, but here’s a new one that may worry nervous pilots: an ice runway.
On Wednesday 15th November, Norse Atlantic Airways landed a Boeing 787 Dreamliner in rather unusual conditions. The destination: Antarctica. The runway: a 3,000-metre-long, 60-metre-wide « blue ice runway » made of snow and ice.
The Dreamliner landed at Troll airfield shortly after 2am in full sunshine, as it is currently summer in the southern hemisphere. This is the first time that a Dreamliner – a widebody aircraft capable of carrying up 330 passengers, according to the model – has arrived on the sixth continent.
But before you try to reserve your own flight to Troll, you should know that flight N0787 was not a regular passenger flight. Among the 45 passengers on board were scientists from the Norwegian Polar Institute, which had contracted the flight to take them and 12 tons of equipment to the Troll research station in Queen Maud Land.
It was not a quick trip across the ocean, either. The plane left Oslo on November 13, stopping in Cape Town before heading even further south on Wednesday evening to make its record-breaking landing.
