A Calgary-based air crew that embarked on a medical mission to evacuate two sick people from a remote research station in Antarctica is now makings its return trip.
The National Science Foundation manages the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station and said in a post on its Facebook page that the Twin Otter aircraft from Kenn Borek Air left the station for the British Antarctic Survey’s Rothera Station early Wednesday morning.
Earlier reports said there was only one patient but NSF spokesperson Peter West confirmed to CTV News that there were two patients.
The plane flew 2400 kilometres to reach the Rothera Station and arrived at about 1:15 p.m. EST.
A medical professional was on board in case medical assistance was needed.
A lack of light and extreme weather conditions make flying into and out of the area in the winter risky and temperatures at the South Pole can be -60 C and can freeze jet fuel.
“It is dark even though there is moonlight when the moon is out. There are no cities or towns or streetlights to navigate by or landmarks like that and there is weather to consider so there are a lot of challenges to a flight like this,” said West.
West said that the flight from the South Pole was tricky because it is so late in the winter season.
“This is the first time this has ever been done in history, at this time of year I should stress, and so it was a challenging thing to do but the pilots and everyone who supports the pilots carefully weighs all the risks of the flight and the condition of the patient before a decision is made to do something like this, so yes unprecedented, difficult but we attempt to manage risk as best we can,” said West.
This is not the first mission to Antarctica for Kenn Borek crews.
They were dispatched on similar missions in 2001 and 2003 and West says the crews from Calgary are the best.
“What makes these folks from Calgary so good is that they have a lot of experience flying in Antarctica. They fly for us during the summers, supporting scientific research in Antarctica, for the U.S. Antarctic Program. They obviously fly in Canada and that’s not an easy thing to do so they have a lot of experience. More over, Kenn Borek, as an organization was instrumental in the two flights, the flights that preceded this in 2001 and 2003 and so they have a lot of institutional knowledge about how to do these sorts of things,” said West.
The flight from Amundsen-Scott to Rothera took about 10 hours and now the crew will rest and then ready the plane for its next leg to Chile where the patients will be treated.
(With files from CTVNews.ca)
