Preparations for this special flight were immense. They included additional training for the pilots via special electronic maps for flight and landing as well as managing the fuel available at the Mount Pleasant military base for the return flight.
In the days before the flight, the Airbus A350-900 was stationed in Munich, where it was prepared for the flight. Once in Hamburg, the aircraft was loaded with additional cargo and baggage, which was extensively disinfected and sealed until departure. Besides the catering, there were additional containers for the residual waste on board, since this can only be discarded after the aircraft arrives back in Germany. The Lufthansa crew included technicians and ground staff for on-site handling and maintenance who all had to quarantine after landing in the Falkland Islands due to government requirements.
The return flight LH2575, is scheduled to depart for Munich on 3 February and will be carrying the Polarstern crew, which had set out from Bremerhaven on December 20 to resupply the Neumayer Station III in Antarctica, and must now be relieved.
This trip has been years in the making and the team couldn’t be happier that the expedition is still going ahead despite the pandemic. Dr. Hartmut Hellmer, physical oceanographer at AWI and scientific leader of the upcoming Polarstern expedition, explained how important it was for their research that the expedition wasn’t cancelled. “We have been collecting fundamental data on ocean currents, sea ice and the carbon cycle in the Southern Ocean,” he said. “As these long-term measurements form the basis for our understanding of polar processes and the urgently needed climate predictions, it is important that research in Antarctica continues in these difficult times. We cannot allow for large data gaps in climate research. The World Economic Forum's recently published World Risk Report continues to rank failure to combat climate change among the greatest threats to humanity.”
In order to make research as climate-friendly as possible, the Alfred Wegener Institute offsets CO2 emissions from business flights via the non-profit climate protection organisation atmosfair - which is also the case for this particular flight. The institute donates funds for biogas plants in Nepal for every mile flown, thereby reducing the same amount of CO2 emissions. In addition to pure CO2 emissions, other pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and soot particles are also taken into account.