Polar Flight Crews Can Build Igloos, Skin Seals

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30312, 12 December 1963, Page 6

Polar Flight Crews Can Build Igloos, Skin Seals

[Bu

GEOFFREY DODD]

SONDRESTROM (Greenland) The steward serving you coffee on a polar flight knows how to shoot a seal, skin it and serve the meat for dinner. This is only part of tha training given to the crews of international sirlines which fly over the top of the world. The crews also know how to build igloos and to employ other methods for keeping themselves and passengers warm in the Arctic wastelands in case of a forced landing. The ability to build a snow hut has become the final polish necessary before airline crews are deemed fit to operate the aircraft which today regularly cross the Greenland icecap, a 1200 by 600 mile plateau of flat snow. Nothing grows on the icecap, which covers all but the edges of the Danish island of Greenland. Apart from Camp Century, an experimental underground town near Thule built by the United States, the icecap is uninhabited. Yet the Greenland air space is being increasinglyf avoured by airlines to link Europe to the United States and to the Far East First Flight

The first trans-polar commercial passenger flight was made by the Scandinavian Airlines System from Copenhagen to the west coast of the United States on November 15, 1954. The flight route

was 700 miles shorter than the conventional route. Three years later the company inaugurated its second transpolar route, across the North Pole from Copenhagen to Tokyo, with a stop at Anchorage, Alaska. This route to the Far Fast has since been duplicated by Air France and Japan Airlines and cuts 2300 miles or 16 hours’ flying time from die previous route. Another trans-polar route, from London via Greenland and the Hudson Bay to Winnipeg. Canada, was opened by Trans-Canadian Airlines. Before the first polar route could be opened, the Scandinavian Airlines System had to develop a completely new means of navigation. Polar flights go so close to the North Pole that magnetic compasses are useless. Beside learning how to use this special polar navigational equipment, air crews were put through an intensive training in Arctic survival, similar to that given military airmen who fly the polar regions. Survival Chances

Although the Greenland icecap is one of the most desolate areas in the world, chances of survival after a crash landing are said to be good. The icecap is almost completely flat, with a soft top surface of loose snow, which

makes an almoat perfect land, ing strip. The snow can be formed into a primitive shelter and a foot or two below the surface there is hard-pocked ice which can be cut into blocks to make an igloo, according to an airlines survival manual. With shelter provided m this way, the manual then go** on to exumine ways of finding food, Md gives detailed instructions of how to alert search pirties. It notes that if the foot of a sock wears out, the upper part can be used for mending or be fitted to a coot as a wristlet that prevents unnecessary loss of heat A new sock can ba made by wrapping the feet in squares cut from a blanket or other piece of doth. Stop-over Base Sondrestrom, the central point for all of Greenland's aviation, originated from a primitive landing strip Blue West 8, built during World War 11. It is now used as a stopover on polar flights between the United States and Europe and is home base for Green, land's ow 1 commercial airline, Greenlanair Incorporated. Sondrestrom is also a main United States Air Force Base in Greenland. Only 15 miles from the edge of the icecap, the base is built on ground which never thaws more than three feet below the surface.