The crew posted almost every day they were flying, and their site is long gone. This is what survives, in order: their own archived dispatches, and the aircraft’s flight recorder log from the FAI record file, which names every field it touched on all twelve days.
“Good morning this is the crew of Helicopter November One Uniform Sierra, finally underway on our Grand Adventure.” Off the deck at LaGuardia at 03:14 Eastern, in the dark, with sunrise nearly three hours away. The log records eight stops that first day: off LaGuardia, then Bangor, Sept Îles, Schefferville, Kuujjuaq, Iqaluit and Pangnirtung before Nuuk, where they stopped for eight and a half hours.
Departed Nuuk. From the command center the same day: “The guys are running on pure adrenalin.” Five fields in one day out of Greenland: Kulusuk, Keflavík, Höfn, Vágar in the Faroes, then Aberdeen.
Across the North Atlantic and into British airspace, with the North Sea and Europe ahead. Aberdeen was the landfall, twenty two minutes on the ground before pushing south.
A second world record taken inside the first, and by roughly 35 hours. The field was Redhill, just south of London, where they stopped for five hours.
Half an hour from Cascina Costa, where the aircraft itself was built the year before. Nine stops that day, the longest run of the record: Redhill, Southampton, Dortmund, Deauville, Bordeaux, Avignon, then Malpensa twice with an inspection between.
“A beautiful sunny morning, we had a great departure... soon we will pick up our interpreter for our flight over Russia.” The one altitude the crew ever published. Graz, then Łódź, then Riga, where the translator came aboard, then St Petersburg and Yaroslavl.
Nineteen fuel stops, four overnight stops, nine time zones, and the requirement that a Russian official be aboard at all times. Six Russian fields on the 11th: Kazan, Ufa, Tyumen, Omsk, Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk.
Between the airspace crossing on the 11th and Okhotsk on the 13th, the whole of 12 August was flown inside Russia. The Russian section came to nineteen fuel stops and four overnight stops across nine time zones, most of it beyond any useful ground support and with a state official aboard for every leg. This was one of the days that made up that count. The log names them: Bratsk, Kirensk, Mirny, Nyurba, Yakutsk and Ust Maya, with nine and a half hours on the deck at Yakutsk.
“Construction closing at one airport, no fuel at another, no clearance to takeoff from UHOO.” An entire day lost, with only one leg flown. The command center answered it by flying fuel in from Alaska. The log times the hold at Okhotsk at 19 hours 22 minutes, the longest stop of the whole record. They reached Magadan the same evening.
The one day of the record with no dispatch of any kind. The flight recorder covers it even though the crew did not: they reached Evensk late on the 13th and did not leave until the evening of the 14th, 19 hours and 43 minutes across two stops. Two of the three worst holds of the whole attempt, Okhotsk and Evensk, came inside four days of each other.
The last field in Russia, and then the Bering Strait. Markovo first, then Anadyr, and out across the Strait.
Across the date line and back onto the American continent for the last lap. Gambell on St Lawrence Island for the drums of fuel, Nome to clear customs, then Galena, Fairbanks for a 50 hour inspection, Northway and Whitehorse.
Fairbanks and the Alaskan interior were behind them and this was the biggest day of the record for sheer field count: out of the Canadian Rockies, across the border, and all the way down the American west to New Mexico by nightfall. Eleven stops, more than any other day: Fort Nelson, Whitecourt and Calgary in Canada, then Spokane, Walla Walla, Eugene, Chico, Ely, Page in Arizona and Santa Fe, at 6,348 ft the highest field on the route.
The longest zig zag of the record, flown to pick up states rather than distance: Guymon, Cheyenne, Pierre and Fergus Falls, then four hours on the ramp at Ironwood in Michigan where an AgustaWestland engineer went over the aircraft while the crew slept, then Moline, Cape Girardeau, Monroe, Pensacola, Peachtree City and Hickory. Harlan filed “Sprint Finish” the same day, explaining why the aircraft was crossing the country in that shape.
Back over LaGuardia at 15:05 Eastern, 11 days 7 hours and 2 minutes after they left. Columbus, Bridgeport, Dulles, Niagara Falls and Burlington, and then the last leg home.
