A flight to Antarctica on a United States Air Force C-17 aircraft seen from within

Today you can fly to a multitude of places almost all over the world, but there is still one particularly fascinating destination.

Antarctic Snow Cruiser, a huge exploration vehicle that disappeared in Antarctica
The South Pole of Inaccessibility, the most remote point in Antarctica and its little dictator

That destination is Antarctica, the world's least populated continent due to its freezing temperatures, despite which there are 70 landing strips, most of them made of ice, although there are also some made of cement and gravel. The country with the most landing sites in Antarctica is the United States, with 13 in total, four of them operated jointly with New Zealand and one with Chile.

To fly to the continent, the United States Air Force (USAF) uses Boeing C-17 Globemaster III strategic transport aircraft, which are capable of operating on poorly prepared runways, including Antarctic ice fields. In addition, the USAF also operates ten Lockheed LC-130 Hercules from the New York Air National Guard, equipped with skis to be able to operate on the frozen ground of the continent.

These aircraft support personnel of the United States Antarctic Program (USAP), which operates three research stations on the continent: McMurdo Station (on Ross Island), Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station (located at the geographic South Pole), and Palmer Station (on Anvers Island). In addition, USAP maintains dozens of temporary camps of various sizes in Antarctica.

USAF flights to Antarctica operate from Christchurch, New Zealand, home to the International Antarctic Center, which serves as the gateway to the frozen continent. USAP McMurdo Station has four airstrips on Ross Island: two ice runways (McMurdo and Pegasus Field), suitable for LC-130s, and two snow runways (Phoenix Airfield and Williams Field), suitable for C-17s.

This Thursday, Matty Jordan posted an interesting video showing a C-17 ride from Christchurch to Phoenix Airfield, one of the runways at McMurdo Station, and then on to Scott Base, a New Zealand research station on Ross Island:

A note: in the video you can see a Basler BT-67 of the Canadian airline Kenn Borek Air (point 8:16), that is, an old Douglas DC-3 equipped with Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-67R turboprop engines. It is admirable to see that these very old planes are still flying all the way to Antarctica.

---

Photos: United States Antarctic Program (USAP).