Travellers' Checks | Retrace 1926 Amundsen flight to the North Pole in a luxury airship

The first undisputed visit to the North Pole was made by airship in May 1926. Among several scientists and crew on-board were the famed Norwegian polar explorer Roald Amundsen, his American financial backer Lincoln Ellsworth and the Italian aviator and engineer Umberto Nobile. Flags of all three countries were dropped onto the ice below before the Norge continued on her journey from Norway to Alaska.

Amundsen, who had become the first man to reach the South Pole 15 years earlier, and Nobile fell out furiously, with the Italian believing that, having designed and piloted the airship, he hadn’t received enough credit for the venture. Nobile returned in 1928 with a similar airship, the Italia, to revisit the Pole without Amundsen, but crashed on the return journey to Norway. Ten men fell onto the ice, while six were carried away in what remained of the airship, never to be seen or heard from again. Nobile and seven of the original crew were rescued more than six weeks later, by which time Amundsen – who had surprisingly joined the massive international search effort – had gone missing in a spotter plane. He, too, was never seen again.

That, not surprisingly, was the last time an airship flew to the North Pole, though a Swedish company has plans to return in 2023. OceanSky intends to operate 36-hour, round-trip flights from Norway to the North Pole, with 16 passengers paying handsomely for the privilege of flying “low and slow” in splendid luxury. The airship to be used for the journey is the British Airlander 10 – aka “The Flying Bum” – whose prototype collapsed after slipping its moorings in late 2017. (The company’s publicity quotes, incidentally, seem only to mention Amundsen and the Norge rather than Nobile and the Italia.)

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