The crew had already turned back once. An oil leak had forced the Antonov AN-2 to stop at the eighty-fourth parallel and return to Prince Patrick Island without reaching the North Pole the previous year. But Donald Olson joined the crew again for another attempt in the spring of 1998.
Growing up about 120 nautical miles from the Arctic Circle, Olson knew all too well the risks of flying in such an unforgiving landscape. He had lost his father and two brothers in aviation accidents and as a result was committed to aviation safety. On the chance that the airplanes lost satellite reception in the vast, white expanse over the North Pole, he learned to read a sextant and studied previous explorers who had navigated the Arctic.
Olson was recruited for the expedition, a commemoration of the first transpolar crossing of an AN-2 in 1928, because of his heavy tailwheel experience-a necessity for taking off and landing the fuel-laden Russian biplane-and for his experience with off-airport operations in western Alaska. Olson had earned his Russian pilot certificate in the AN-2 six years earlier when he attended flight school in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and he had been flying in Alaska since high school. If the aircraft's 1,000-hp radial engine failed, Olson would land the airplane.
Click here to read the rest of the story, and to see some amazing photographs of Olson and his planes.