Rescuers succeed in evacuating sick workers from the South Pole in winter

For the third time ever, rescue workers have successfully evacuated someone from the South Pole during the brutal Antarctic winter, the National Science Foundation said Wednesday afternoon.

A plane carrying two sick workers from the Amundsen-Scott research station arrived on the Antarctic Coast on Wednesday, following a harrowing 10-hour flight across the continent. Both workers require medical attention not available at the station, prompting the rare rescue effort.

Typically, none of the 50 or so people who overwinter at Amundsen-Scott can leave between February and October. One former worker even described the South Pole as more inaccessible than the International Space Station.

During the six-month polar night, when the sun never rises and the wind chill regularly dips below minus-100 degrees Fahrenheit, flight to the station is all but impossible. Fuel freezes to an unusable jelly at those temperatures, and it's unsafe for planes to fly over terrain they can't see. In the past, a winter worker with cancer and another who suffered a stroke have remained at the station until October, when flights to the pole resume.

[Ski plane arrives at South Pole in rare and risky midwinter rescue mission]

But this time the NSF, which runs the South Pole station, decided that the circumstances at the pole demanded an evacuation. For privacy reasons, the foundation couldn't provide further information about the medical conditions that prompted the rescue.

The two sick patients are due to fly next to Punta Arenas in Chile, the nearest mainland airport. From there, they will be taken to a hospital that has not been disclosed.

The plane that rescued them – a hardy Twin Otter operated by the Canadian firm Kenn Borek Air – is one of the only aircraft capable of flying at the low temperatures at the pole.

Kenn Borek pilots carried out the two previous evacuation missions: one in 2001 to rescue a doctor with pancreatitis and a second in 2003 for a environmental health and safety officer who developed a serious gallbladder infection.

"You're the only plane flying on an entire continent," said Sean Loutitt, the chief pilot for Kenn Borek on both those missions. "You have to be prepared to be totally self-reliant if something goes wrong."