THE MANY DANGERS OF AN ANTARCTIC RESCUE

Pilots on two Canadian bush planes are in the midst of a treacherous task as they navigate extreme weather in a bid to rescue an ailing researcher from Antarctica. Two Twin Otter planes from Calgarybased Kenn Borek Air are on their way to the South Pole for a medical evacuation. One will stay at the British station Rothera for search and rescue purposes, while the other will travel on to the Amundsen-Scott Research station at the South Pole. Kenn Borek, a small passenger and cargo airline, has piloted rescue missions to Antarctica before. In 2001 and 2003, it flew into Amundsen-Scott to rescue workers who needed to be hospitalized. But on a flight in January 2013 to deliver fuel to an Italian research team, a Kenn Borek plane crashed into an Antarctic mountain, killing all three people on board. “It’s never an easy place to fly,” said Peter West, a spokesman for the National Science Foundation, which oversees American research in Antarctica. “But there are additional challenges for a winter flight.” The National Post’s Nick Faris highlights five of them:

PERPETUAL DARKNESS

The foremost issue is Antarctica’s lack of sunlight. There is a weekslong period in June where the sun doesn’t rise, a condition that extends over several months at the South Pole. When the pilots descend on Amundsen-Scott, they’ll be doing so from pitch-black skies. “Obviously,” West said, “we wouldn’t undertake this mission if, on the basis of medical experts, it wasn’t felt that it was necessary to bring this person out of the South Pole, to a place where they can get treatment.”

FRIGID COLD

The lowest recorded air temperature in human history was noted at Vostok — a Russian-run Antarctic research centre, located south of China — on July 21, 1983: -89.2 C. That’s an extreme measurement, but it is not radically different from what visitors to Amundsen-Scott typically confront. Monthly recordings from 1957 to 1988 show average daily temperatures of -58 C in June, dipping to a low of -60 C in August.

ARDUOUS ICE

The National Science Foundation has a presidential mandate “going back to the Reagan administration” to commandeer American research in Antarctica, West said. Unfortunately, the continent’s unforgiving climate dates back much further. Ninety-eight per cent of Antarctica is covered in ice, which makes landing a plane a daunting task. Because the runways at the Jack F. Paulus Skiway airport, near Amundsen-Scott, are situated on ice and snow, there are no permanent lights. The Twin Otters are equipped with skis and tundra tires for icy landings year-round, though, and GPS and navigation systems are in place to identify the runway.

LONG, LONG JOURNEY

The flight was scheduled to take at least five days. The distance from Calgary to Amundsen-Scott — with stops in the U.S., Costa Rica, Ecuador and Chile — is nearly 16,700 kilometres, counting a lengthy leg over most of Antarctica. “They’re flying across a continent the size of the U.S. and Mexico combined,” West said. The trip is being stretched over several days to avoid exhausting the crew and planes.

UNPREDICTABLE WEATHER

The pilots don’t know what the weather will be like when they approach the research station. After leaving South America, they’ll fly south to Rothera to briefly set up camp and determine when to make an aerial pass at Amundsen-Scott. “Weather is a very difficult thing to keep track of,” West said. “(It’s) much more difficult than it would be, say, in Canada, for example, or the U.S.”