Norse Atlantic Airways achieves first by landing a Boeing 787 in Antarctica

The Boeing 787 Dreamliner helped transport scientists from the Norwegian Polar Institute and other countries and 12 tons of essential research equipment for the exploration of the South Pole.

The Norwegian company Norse Atlantic Airways achieved a world first on November 16 by landing one of its Boeing 787 Dreamliners at Troll airfield (QAT), in Antarctica.

Landing on a “blue ice” runway

Beyond the very good communication “coup”, the Norse Atlantic Airways flight made it possible to transport scientists from the Norwegian Polar Institute and other countries and 12 tonnes of research equipment for polar explorations to the site. Departing Oslo on November 13, flight NO787, carried out with the Boeing 787 registered LN-FNC and named “Everglades”, landed in Cape Town in South Africa. It took off again towards Antarctica on Wednesday November 15 at 11:03 p.m., to land in Antarctica on Thursday.

Troll Airfield, which is owned and managed by the Norwegian Polar Institute, which operates the research station located at Jutulsessen, in Queen Maud Land (portion of the Antarctic continent claimed by Norway), located 235 kilometers from the side. As Antarctica has no conventional tarmac landing strips, the Troll airfield is equipped with a runway made of “blue ice” 3,000 meters long and 60 meters wide. The airfield opened in 2005 and until now had only accommodated smaller aircraft, up to the Boeing 767. Queen Maud Land is an Antarctic area extending over 2,500,000 km2 and its coastlines were discovered in 1929 and 1930 by Norwegian aviation pioneers Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen and Finn Lutzöw-Holm. Let us also remember that it was a Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen, who was the first to reach the South Pole on December 14, 1911, while he was engaged in a race to the pole with the British explorer Robert Falcon Scott.