Flight Over South Pole Approved

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31830, 7 November 1968, Page 12

Flight Over South Pole Approved

The United States Government Antarcticpolicy authorities have approved a round-the-world flight by 60 American tourists which will land them at every continent and take them across both polar regions.

The flight is intended to commemorate Admiral Bryd’s first Antarctic flight in 1929, and has been organised by the directors of the Admiral Richard E. Byrd Polar Centre, Boston, Massachusetts.

The polar flight has been approved because it is nonrecurring and non-commer-cial. The tourists, most of them business executives, will spend a limited time at McMurdo Station. The four-engined Convair 990 jet aircraft carrying the tourists will leave Boston on Friday and land at Mangere about November 19, sifter landings at Thule, Anchorage, Tokyo, Manila, Darwin and Sydney. From Christchurch the party will fly to McMurdo Station, Rio de Janeiro, Dakar, Rome, London and back to Boston. While in New Zealand the tourists will travel to Rotorua and Wellington in two chartered Friendships. The flight to Christchurch will be in a chartered National Airways Corporation Boeing 737. The New Zealand visit has been organised by the Atlan-

tic and Pacific Travel Agency. The 26-day flight will cost each tourist SUSIO,OOO. The oldest is aged 75, the chairman of a tractor company, and the youngest, aged 27, is a buyer for drug stores.