In the shadow of Charles Kingsford Smith’s Southern Cross, two intrepid pilots landed their single-engine plane in Brisbane today, around halfway through an epic around-the-world flight. The two pilots, Peter Teahen and John Ockenfels, are raising money on behalf of the Rotary Foundation to end polio.
Photo: Brisbane Airport
The two, both members of Rotary, are funding the trip themselves and for every dollar donated the Gates Foundation will contribute another $2. Their aircraft is a single-engine Cessna T210M, registration N732WP, which landed at Brisbane Airport (BNE) today at 11:02.
After landing in Brisbane, the two pilots visited the Kingsford Smith Memorial to see the Southern Cross, the first aircraft to cross the Pacific from the United States to Australia 95 years ago. After seeing the plane, Teahen said:
“To see what Sir Charles Kingsford Smith and his crew achieved by navigating by the stars is truly remarkable. We have GPS today which pinpoints our location anywhere on earth [and] if our flight was relying on the stars to get home we’d be in a lot of trouble.”
Photo: Brisbane Airport
The circumnavigation started on May 5th, when the pair left their home airport of Cedar Rapids, Iowa in the United States. Since then they have landed in New Hampshire in the US, Canada, Iceland, Scotland, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, France, Portugal, Netherlands, Greece, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia, before landing in Northern Australia at Darwin Airport (DRW).
Since touching down in Darwin, the Cessna has been to Cairns, Toowoomba and Brisbane and is due to depart tomorrow on the long trek across the Pacific Ocean and back to the USA. According to Flightradar24.com, the Cessna T210M has flown two sectors longer than seven hours, these being a flight from Goose Bay Airport (YYR) in Canada to Reykjavik Airport (RKV) in Iceland and from Colombo (Sri Lanka) to Phuket (Bangkok).
Some very long sectors ahead
Photo: Brisbane Airport
They plan on being back in Iowa on July 30th and will then join the roster of the 700 pilots who have flown around the world in a single-engine aircraft. Peter Teahen said he was originally going to fly solo until his wife told him to find someone as crazy as him to take along, so he enlisted his cousin, John Ockenfels to join. Teahen said:
“We’ve been trying to do this flight for four years. We were ready to go in 2020, but 10 days before launch COVID-19 broke out. In 2021 COVID canceled us a second time, and last year we were ready to depart and fly via Russia when the invasion of Ukraine occurred. So this flight has been a long time coming.”
Photo: Brisbane Airport
They face a tough trip home with flights of up to 15 hours as they island-hop across the Pacific. That includes flights to New Caledonia, Fiji, American Samoa, Hawaii, California and Colorado before their triumphant return to Cedar Rapids. The Cessna has extra fuel tanks installed on the wing tips and a fuel bladder in the back of the aircraft, extending its range to 19 hours.
At each stop local Rotary Club members have joined the pair in fundraisers, and so far, more than $1 million has been raised for polio prevention. For more information or to donate go to: flighttoendpolio.com
What do you think about flying around the world in a single-engine plane? Let us know in the comments.
