rustica

Today we have the Aussie bird.




Now, this is an unusual one. It's a luxury charter plane that's certified for Antarctica! And that's quite a surprise given how conservative and risk-averse aviation is, but as the pilot pointed out, it's not the (summer) conditions that make Antarctica so unusual. These planes fly in other places in the world that are just as cold. It's the remoteness of Antarctica that makes it challenging.



This plane carries about 40 people when it goes down to the ice, which is a lot less than it can normally seat. That's because the flight is so long they need to carry extra fuel, which comes off the total weight they can carry. For this reason, they've taken out a lot of seats in the centre of the plane, which probably helps for storing all the cold weather kit that the passengers have to carry with them. The way these seats were numbered, it looks as though the seating is planned that the middle seats of each group of three is usually unoccupied. The seating that was currently there was 6 rows at the front and 7 at the back, which by my maths makes 78 seats in total, which is certainly enough to let people spread out a bit. They carry a lot of cargo as well on these runs.


View to the rear seating


The - very experienced - pilot in the cockpit.


Front, side and rear views of one of the engines.