Upcoming flight


Now, 41 years after the last such flight, a sub-50-hour aviation adventure is being planned to take air travelers over both poles. The Polar Express is scheduled to take off this coming October 26 from New York's JFK International Airport with about 150 passengers.
The route will take them from JFK to Río Gallegos airport in southern Argentina. Taking off from there, the Polar Express will fly over the South Pole and continue all the way to Perth, Australia. Next, it's on to Beijing. And the final leg of the trip takes the plane over the North Pole and back to JFK.
The jet for this upcoming trip will be an Airbus A340-300 -- a large, wide-body, long-range airliner with four trusty engines. Coach tickets start at $11,900. Amenities include specially created cocktails, informative lectures, inflight yoga classes, and an Antarctica expert who will explain what passengers see out the windows.
Baum will join this polar party as its historian, documenting it to create the final chapter of his book "Over Both Poles: Epic Flights Around the World," which is due early next year.
Clearly, the glory days of record-setting global air travel have not completely passed. For those who can muster the time and money, there are still rare experiences to be found out there.