AgustaWestland A109S Grand · serial number 40

N1US

Built near Milan and delivered in July 2007. The first Grand flown across the North Atlantic and the first stationed in the United States. A five passenger executive fit with all standard factory avionics, and it went around the world exactly as it came off the line.

12.96 m

Length, rotors turning

11.00 m

Main rotor diameter

213 gal

Fuel, factory capacity

2 × 735

shp, Pratt & Whitney PW207C

N1US, the black AgustaWestland A109S Grand, with the Grand Adventure team in front of it — The real thing: N1US on the ramp with the team, from the FAI’s page for the record.Fédération Aéronautique Internationale

A black AgustaWestland A109S Grand in the hover with its gear down, two pilots aboard — Light on the wheels with the gear still down, which is where all 78 fuel stops began and ended.Supplied

N1US in flight, gear retracted, against blue sky — Gear up and running. Cruise was 11,000 ft, the one altitude the crew ever published.

The registration

A tail number held for thirty years

“1US” had been held by the U.S. Sugar Corporation for over thirty years. When the designation was released another pilot claimed it immediately, and Kasprowicz bought it from him.

It was carried on the tail boom in a warm champagne against black. The airframe reads blue in some photographs, but that is a gloss finish mirroring the sky and the hangar; the shadowed panels measure almost pure black.

The aircraft carried N1US from June 2007, more than a year before the record. It has since gone from the United States register. The tail number has not: ROTOR1US has held it ever since.

Registered	15 June 2007
Held by	ROTOR1US LLC, Middleburg, Virginia
Reserved with the FAA since	15 October 2010

It was the aircraft that made it possible

The crew published their own comparison against the aircraft they were chasing, and lost on paper.

ReadWhy it stands