Meet the Family of Five Travelling Around the World in a Single-Engine Airplane

Credit: SWNS / Samantha Porter

Transcript

00:00 How you feeling, Doug?

00:02 Good.

00:04 Good answer.

00:05 [Music]

00:30 Today we flew to our 12th country on our Around the World expedition. Crazy to even say that.

00:35 But it gets even better. On today's flight, we were able to see one of the seven natural wonders of the world.

00:40 We left Ascensión Paraguay this morning and prepped ourselves to cross another border.

00:44 You'd think we would be getting the hang of it, and although we are getting more dialed,

00:48 there's always something new that pops up, maybe something that goes wrong.

00:51 Today was one of the very few, if any, absolutely perfect, beautifully sunny,

00:56 have-okay days of flying since, honestly, before the Bahamas. It made for a great trip across Paraguay,

01:01 and we got to see a lot of the beautiful countryside and farmland from the air.

01:05 [Music]

01:35 Our longest flight to date was when we flew from Boa Vista, Brazil, to Manaus, Brazil.

01:39 It was 316 nautical miles and took us three hours and 52 minutes.

01:42 We spent the entire time dodging low clouds, smoke, and we honestly weren't even sure if we were going to be able to make it to our destination

01:47 flying completely VFR or have to turn back.

01:50 Flying over dense Amazon jungle isn't something to take lightly, even on the best of days,

01:53 but add in crappy weather and the logistics get quite intense.

01:56 The spread between temperature and dew point is so small that any rising air almost immediately generates clouds,

02:01 which start to build from early morning and into massive afternoon thunderstorms that can reach 40,000 feet or more.

02:06 There are almost no places to land and the heat and turbulence make for some pretty tiring flying.

02:10 About halfway to Manaus, the building storm cells were mixed with dense smoke from the fire throughout the region,

02:15 making an unpredictable mix of weather as we approached the city.

02:17 You can see we spent as much time as possible following the road as we flew south,

02:21 so if we had to execute an emergency landing due to an engine failure or if something else were to go wrong, we stood a chance.

02:26 We also carry appropriate jungle survival gear along with personal locator beacons and other satellite communication equipment.

02:32 Always better safe than sorry.

02:34 [Music]

02:39 [BLANK_AUDIO]