On the evening of February 24, the Boeing 767-300ER (TF-ISN) Icelandair aircraft took off from Keflavik Airport (Iceland) bound for Antarctica. The mission aims to transport some Norwegian scientists, who are returning from a research expedition.
The first leg of the FI1010 flight covered 12.000 kilometers from Keflavík to Cape Town. From there, the aircraft headed for Antarctica, where it landed on a rudimentary runway dug into the ice with ice grooves to ensure friction for the aircraft's landing.
The cabin crew consisted of 6 pilots, 13 flight attendants and a flight engineer.
The aircraft took over the crew of the Troll Research Center, operated by the Norwegian Polar Institute and located in the eastern part of Antarctica, on the Coast of Princess Martha.
Landing in Antarctica was about an hour. It operated the return flight on the route Troll Research Station - Cape Town - Oslo (where Norwegian researchers landed) - Reykjavik (end of line / end of mission).
In recent years, there have been such flights to Antarctica. In 2015, another Icelandair aircraft, a Boeing 757-200, landed in Antarctica, being at that time the largest aircraft ever to land on the southernmost continent. In November 2019, a Boeing 767 Titan Airways flew six flights between Cape Town and Novolazarevskaya, a Russian Antarctic research station.