Australians aim for transocean flight

Two Australian men are trying to fly a Piper Aztec out of Kalispell City Airport and get the plane and themselves back home thousands of miles away.

If all goes as planned, they would fly nearly a third of the way around the world and across its longest east-to-west stretch of uninterrupted ocean.

“You got to write letters to your kids and stuff like that,” said pilot David Thorley, the plane’s owner.

Thorley and fellow pilot Stuart Caling have been hard at work on the 1967 Piper Aztec in a hangar at Red Eagle Aviation, trying to ready the twin-engine aircraft for about 7,500 miles of flight.

They hope to depart from Kalispell any day now.

They won’t take many souvenirs back with them. Life jackets, an inflatable life raft with provisions, some electronic locating transmitters and extra fuel will make up most of their cargo.

Across the runway at Montana Diamond Aire, which specializes in Piper Aztec modifications, the twin-engine plane has already been outfitted with upgraded windows, door seals, flap gap seals, dorsal fin and long-range radio. It also had wingtip fuel tanks installed for additional flying range.

“Normally the aircraft’s got about six hours of range. Obviously we need more than that,” said Caling, a professional pilot with experience ferrying planes long distances.

Once the Australians fly out of Kalispell, their next major destination is an airport near San Francisco. They plan to spend about a week there finishing the last of a large amount of paperwork that needs to be done.

When they are ready to embark on the transpacific flight, Thorley and Caling will fill up the plane’s fuel tanks. Those will include three specialty rubber bladders fitted inside the six-passenger plane to hold 300 gallons of extra fuel needed to reach Hawaii.

Because of all that fuel, the Piper must be certified to fly about 20 percent over its normal weight limits.

Departing from California, Thorley and Stewart will take off with a long, slow climb that leads them out over the Pacific and points them towards Hawaii, a tiny speck of land some 2,300 miles and 15 hours of nonstop flying away.

At that point the Piper Aztec would be carrying so much fuel that if something went wrong and the pilots had to cancel the flight, they still would have to fly for about six hours, Thorley said. That would burn off enough fuel for the plane to handle the impact of landing.

“The longest stretch of water anywhere in the world is between the U.S. [mainland] and Hawaii, because there’s no islands anywhere between,” Thorley said.

Out at sea, they would try to fly at 8,000 to 9,000 feet. That’s high enough to give them some time to fix a problem before they go “into the drink.” And it’s low enough to keep them out of strong headwinds that can slow even large jets.

“A normal commercial flight is about an hour-and-a-half longer going to Australia than going the other way, because of the winds,” Thorley said.

The two Australians plan to stay in Hawaii for one day and then depart on the second leg of their flight, with planned stops at Samoa and Norfolk Island.

GENERAL AVIATION aircraft and parts can be scarce in Australia, Thorley said. That’s why he bought his plane down in Oklahoma and has gradually fixed it up both there and in Kalispell over the last two years.

When Thorley gets back to the Gold Coast, he plans to use the rebuilt Piper Aztec for Outback evangelism as a member of the Adventist Aviation Association.

“We have 80 volunteers to fly out on the weekends to Outback towns where people don’t have any support systems or spiritual input. So we get out there and let them know they’re not alone,” he said.

For now, Thorley is doing some serious praying of his own, hoping he and Caling can first get the big, years-in-the-making trip off the ground and then make it safely back to their homes Down Under.

“I’ve got a lot of good reasons to survive the trip,” Thorley said of the transpacific flight and his wife and two daughters.

“But you also have to face reality ... There’s a 5 percent chance you’ll go down and a 50-50 chance you’ll get rescued. That’s what the odds are.”

Reporter Tom Lotshaw may be reached at 758-4483 or by email at tlotshaw@dailyinterlake.com.