The Dangers
Where to start?
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The cold, perhaps, the most obvious thing. The thermometer below shows minus 21 centigrade (minus 6 fahrenheit) BUT this is in Longyearbyen. The North Pole is several hundred miles further north - and 10 - 20 degrees colder!
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So the temperature of where they are going will be ~ minus 30 to minus 40 degrees centigrade.
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If their airplane goes down on the way to the North Pole [or the way back, if they make it there] then their survival suits are only good for an hour, maybe two.
And there are no rescue services within several hours who could come and find them - if they are found.
Helmut wrapped up for the cold weather in Longyearbyen.
Helmut may be looking a little like a polar bear in the picture above, but polar bears are no joke. If their engine fails or they run out of fuel and their plane goes down on the ice, and
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- if they survive the crash landing
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- and can get out with whatever injuries they have
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- and if their airplane doesn't go through the thin layer of ice and sink immediately
all of them very BIG ifs: then there will be hungry polar bears. In fact, the archipelago of Svalbard has more polar bears that people.
Polar bears look cute, but they're really half-ton, ruthless killers.
The aviators will carry a gun in the aircraft, but it is said that if a bear gets your scent, only you or the bear will live to see the end of the day.
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They don't have enough fuel for the return trip - if they are going to get back they MUST find and land at the North Pole camp to re-fuel. They will reach a 'PNR' a 'point of no return'. This is the place where they have burned half their fuel: if they carry on from there, then they will not have enough fuel to get back if they have a problem or cannot find the airstrip at the North Pole.
If they have a problem they will have to crash land on the ice. If they do, the aircraft will be lost - it cannot be recovered.
Their navigation systems are useless. Their built-in GPS won't work: in fact, it's so inaccurate above 70 degrees north that it is disabled by the nav system manufacturer.
Yet of course the North Pole is 90 degrees north and in fact almost all of the route from Longyearbyen to the North Pole is above 70 degrees north.
In the picture below the disabled area is simply plain green on the right display - it shows nothing there. The display simply ends a little way north of Svalbard and a wildly curved path is shown, even though they are going straight due north.
And the compass is of no use - it points at magnetic north which is hundreds of miles from their destination of geographic north [the true north pole].
Yet they absolutely MUST find the landing strip at the North Pole as they need the fuel to get back. The ice at the North Pole has no features to guide them: it all looks more or less the same - white.
And as it is just ice which drifts on the surface of the water at up to 3 miles per hour, even if they know the coordinates of the landing strip at the time they set off, it will have moved by anything up to 15 miles by the time they get there - which is far too far to spot it. They just have to hope they can find it it.
And then there is the weather. Bad weather can bring down even the biggest airplane, if it doesn't know about the bad weather in advance. In most parts of the world there are aviation weather services but there are none where they are going. Commercial jets at high altitude over the North Pole are above the weather, or if not, they can go around any bad weather using their weather radar for guidance. But Helmut and Henrik's plane has no weather radar, and does not even have de-icing equipment. Ice on wings destroys lift - so if they get ice on their wings, they are going down into the Arctic Ocean or onto the ice.
The trouble is, any clouds will have ice in them and they don't know where the clouds will be when they set off, and even in flight - when they might see the clouds ahead [although with everything being white it is hard to tell] then they likely can't go around or climb over or go below.
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In many of the photos and much of the film the weather looks good with bright blue skies. But that is deceptive: it is cruelly cold, the sort of cold that gets into your bones in minutes and takes hours to warm up from, if you are rash enough to venture outside - even briefly - without all the correct gear on.
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And the weather can change incredibly fast: below are two images from the last day's filming: it was blue skies and calm then within an hour the clouds rolled in and the wind was howling.
Even if they have a problem, if they are out of communication, or are lost or have an electrical problem or any one of the hundreds of other things that can go wrong in an airplane as long as their airplane can keep flying they they have a chance. That all depends upon engine power of course. And their airplane has only one engine. An engine that has already failed twice in the first part of the trip - fortunately in both cases, while on the ground.
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Lastly is airspace. That is, who controls the airspace above the North Pole. The area is fiercely guarded by Russia, Norway and Denmark: all of whom regularly scramble jets when an airplane from another country has strayed into the wrong airspace.
Commercial jets are allowed of course and their flightplans and guidance systems indicate who they are and where they are, so they are left alone. But Helmut & Henrik's Cessna has none of these.
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