Aviation View - March 2024

Source- aviationweek.com , Molly McMillin,First Published 4th April, 2024 Founder of air ambulance provider Global Jetcare, Bart Gray, alongside three additional pilots and an observer, took to the skies in a Learjet 36A at 11:49 p.m. CDT on April 3, departing Wichita for the start of a 60-hr., 11-stop, round-the-world record-setting flight flying westbound. The flight, called the Century Mission, commemorates the first-ever round-the world flight 100 years ago— “and the men who set the bar for all future aerial circumnavigators,” Gray says. Gray spent departure day conducting briefings, buying food, loading the aircraft, weighing it all and working down 38 items on his mission checklist. “I’ve got all of them done—except one,” Gray told Aviation Week Network before the flight. LEARJET 36A CREW DEPARTS WICHITA FOR RECORD ROUND-THE-WORLD FLIGHT “The last one is to get on [the aircraft] and go,” he said outside of the former Bombardier Learjet delivery center at the Wichita Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport. After months of planning, it was time to pose for photos, board the aircraft, go through the checklist, start the engines and taxi to the runway.A fewminutes later, the Learjet came into sight, flying over buildings at the Bombardier facility on its way to its first stop in California. After an expected 60-hr. mission, which includes 54.5 flight hours, they are expected to return to Wichita at about the same time the crew of the first round-the- world flight would have taken off on April 6, 1924. The journey is a fundraiser for the restoration to flying condition of a historic Lear Jet Model 23, Serial 23-003 owned by Wichita-based Classic Lear Jet Foundation. The 1964 Lear Jet 23 was the first Lear Jet to be delivered to a customer. OPENING L INES 7 AVIATION VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 04, ISSUE 01