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Australian Pilot Stranded In Antarctica
mirio writes "Australian Jon Johanson is currently stranded in Antarctica at the US McMurdo outpost. He was attempting a flight from New Zealand to Argentina via the South Pole when he encountered a headwind that caused him to burn more fuel and divert to the base. Now both the Americans and the New Zealanders there are refusing to sell him fuel. Jon's story is amazing. He has flown his homebuilt RV-4 around the world three times and to the North Pole. You can read about his trips around the world here."
Besides tourism is fairly common in that part of the world anyway.
and that that's the reason they won't sell him fuel, but damn, that's pretty inhospitable.
inhospitable? the americans are providing him food and shelter, and the kiwis have offered to fly him out on the first available flight. additionall, they've offered to ship his plane out after him (at his cost). all in all, sounds pretty reasonable! =)
And their justification is not to be mean. It's that he should have made plans to begin with. It's not their job to be someone's backup plan, as they themselves pointed out.
Am I the only one who thinks the guy should be grateful to be alive? Hey, how about I go to Antarctica..., woop dee doo, woops, there's a bit of a headwind, wouldn't expect that in .. ANTARCTICA. Well, it's a good thing there's people smarter than me, I'm sure they'll save my ass for me. WHAT! I can't get gas!!! Well, no, I didn't plan ahead to possibly have gas shipped here, I figured I could just stop at an Exxon. I mean, there's Exxon all over Alaska, so why not here?
Anyways, fuck'm, he deserves the exact treatment they're giving him. And I bet they won't be charging him for the ride back, to boot.
Do you see the sig? Do you have it in your sights? Why yes, Miss Moneypenny...
Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
If you are going "adventuring", at least have a contingency plan.
Discourage tourism? Hell, if I had a plane and knew how to fly it, I'd be tempted to fly down there and bring him some damn fuel. What if I did, and seven or eight other bright pilots got the same idea?
I can't think of a better way to cause "tourism" than to encourage a good Samaritan act like that...
Sunlit World Scheme. Weird and different.
LOL - my local garage charges US$5.28 per US gallon (actually GBP 0.80 / litre). For roadside callout, it can easily be double that. So $10 doesn't sound that outrageous for Antarctica.
OK, so we're being taxed the hell out of, apparently to cover the cost of roads. I just thought it was funny that your punitive rate actually sounds like quite a bargain here in Britain :-)
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Sell him the gas at a markup, give him a bill for the food and shelter, and call it a day.
There are two problems:
First, to sell the gasoline at cost would still be an exhoribant amount of money, because you have to factor in the price of delivery to Antarctica, which ain't exactly cheap.
Second, even if they recovered the delivery cost, they're still short of fuel, and won't be able to just send out for it the next day. They need their fuel for their own uses, and can't just give it up for any Joe that happens to take off without enough of his own.
steve
Oh, you're not stuck, you're just unable to let go of the onion rings.
It's not quite so simple as that. Here in the UK the RAF (Air Force) run the search and rescue services and regularly pull mountaineers out of accident situations they've gotten themselves into.
From time to time someone in the press brings up your argument about the cost and risk to the RAF. And every time the argument is dismissed by the RAF themselves because they actually want to run the service.
The RAF say that the search and rescue service is ideal training for them. If they didn't run the service they'd have to have a similar number of crews running similar make-believe 'practice' missions - so the net cost of running search and rescue is practically zero and the real thing is better for skills than any make-believe exercise. And of course the PR benefit is immense.
I don't think that 100 gallons of fuel is an insignificant amount in a place where shipments are probably only made every 3-6 months.
I would much prefer to ensure the that fuel was used to help the researchers and their support teams in an emergency rather than some adventurer's poorly planned and whimisical flight of fancy.
Please don't think I undervalue the benefits of exploration and adventure, but what this guy has done is like climbing Everest and not packing a spare tent or two. He's just assumed that the others will bail him out. That's wrong.
If the 1996 Everest Disaster and the 1998 Sydney To Hobart Yacht Race proved nothing else, they demonstrated that Heros die when they go to help others. Being a so-called adventurer and forcing others into risking their lives to help you is completely irresponsible.
I think that offering him food, shelter and a return trip home is extremely generous. Expecting to get fuel that is part of someone else's contingency against disater is nothing short of foolishness.
"The big question in our lives is how to be at the same time a hedonist and in a hurry" - Alain Ducasse (?)
Here's another idea. How about discouraging illegal immigrants that cost taxpayers billions of dollars from breaking our laws, maybe by sending them home? Or even making them pay their own way while they're here? Oh no? That's not compassionate enough? Free schools, hospitals and prisons for them!
How do illegal immigrants cost billions in taxpayer money? Certainly, it would cost far, far more money to police the border and actually locate and deport everyone who wasn't supposed to be here, in addition to turning the country into an orwelian nightmare to do it. Illegal immigrants also contribute to the economy by doing jobs that Americans would frown upon, and by working more cheaply (say, three houses could be build with illegal labor, where one could be build with full-rate American labor). Also, many illegals do in fact pay taxes, because their income is automatically withheld from their paychecks. their kids even die for this country. As far as schools are consourned, all children born in the US are citizens, regardless of the status of their parents. And how exactly would you make them pay for their stay in prison? Or do you think we should just dump them back in Mexico so they can hop back across the border if they are caught committing a crime?
Oh, I get it, you're just stupid.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
inhospitable? the americans are providing him food and shelter, and the kiwis have offered to fly him out on the first available flight. additionall, they've offered to ship his plane out after him (at his cost). all in all, sounds pretty reasonable!
This is going to cost Johanson an arm and a leg, regardless of how it all turns out. If the Americans and Kiwis continue to refuse to sell him any fuel, I suspect that he'll have to do one of two things to get his plane out of there:
1) Take New Zealand's offer to fly out on the next available flight, then pay to have his plane shipped or flown out; or
2) Charter a ship/plane to bring fuel and/or take him and his plane out
Shipping anything by air to Antarctica costs in the neighbourhood of six figures (I'm led to believe that private charters are on a per payload basis only). Might as well airlift his whole plane out if he's going to bother having a chartered aircraft come to Antarctica. Shipping by sea would be much cheaper... perhaps as little as $6,000 US (based on what it might cost to charter a ship from an IAATO member to bring fuel in, or as much as $50,000 to charter a ship big enough to take his plane out.
Maybe this is why Johanson is reluctant to leave his plane behind. He's probably asked himself this question already: "Would it be cheaper to have my plane shipped to Chile, have fuel shipped in from somewhere, or build a new plane once I got home?" (I think that an RV-4 kit would be pushing $15,000 US, but probably much more outfitted like his must be)
Now it sort of makes sense why he's still holding out hope that the Americans or Kiwis will sell him the fuel he needs to fly his RV-4 back to NZ. Even though 400 litres of fuel would probably cost in the mid four-figure range (due to the enormous transportation costs involved in bringing anything to Antarctica), it's probably a lot cheaper than the alternatives.
D.
(ps. I may be talking out of ear here because my cost figures are mostly second-hand... anybody have more concrete figures?)
One extra gallon per 300 needed? That's not a contingency plan.
Except that those bases have repeatedly and publicly stated that THIS IS THE WRONG THING TO BELIEVE. This jerkoff isn't the first amateur half-ass to get stranded in Antartica and expect scientific bases to suddenly bail him out. Even the slightest amount of pre-trip research would have told him that they do not have spare fuel.
The "I've always relied on the kindness of strangers" approach? Nothing personal, pal, but that's fucking stupid. "I don't need to pack the trunk with flares or a spare tire or a jack or a blanket or a gallon of water or some food -- surely within minutes of the breakdown/accident/whatever, some random person will come by and give me all the supplies I need."
I almost died from exposure less than 20 miles from home (snowstorm, -15 degrees F, freezing rain, and a flat tire), and I live in fucking Ohio, the dullest place on earth. In a major city, too, not the boonies. Fortunately, I had a heavy blanket and a good spare tire in the car. After getting it changed, I drove straight to the hospital to be treated for frostbite. Not another vehicle ever drove by; if I'd waited for a total stranger I'd likely be dead.
That was Ohio. This dipshit went to Antartica and planned less than I did.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
He's not on a highway. The idea is that Antarctica NOT become a highway.
So here comes this bloke, trying to fly across the entire place on a whim, and he doesn't make it. Now he wants these scients to scrap some their research plans for the summer (it's summer down there now, prime time research season) after they've fought and scrambled for a place on the Antartic research team. For some it's their one and only shot at doing research in the Antartic.
Basically he's asking some of these scientists to give up their research dreams to salvage his pet plane. I doubt that makes them feel all warm and giving.
As they say in Tech Support, "A lack of planning on your part does not constitue an emergency on mine."
As the poster of this story and a homebuilt airplane builder myself (RV-7A), I can tell you that this guy probably does have more sense than money. He's a nurse midwife (yes, he delivers babies). He isn't overly wealthy and neither am I. I'm a software engineer with 5 years of experience and according to most salary surveys I make about average salary. Johanson really dedicated himself to building the plane and made it happen by saving money in other areas of his life (like most homebuilders do). Don't think this guy is a rich flyboy like that Branson fellow circling the world in a balloon. This guys track record shows that he does know what he's doing (he's circled the Earth thrice). On the other hand, I do agree with you that he screwed up royally by not making prior arrangements with McMurdo in case of an emergency.
And how much do you think rescuing a couple of stupid tourists a year is going to cost?
As a former Search and Rescue team member, I've got absolutely no sympathy for the guy. He didn't plan ahead, didn't coordinate, and now he expects someone else to bail him out.