Members of international Arctic expedition brace for Alaska flight
"We're going to the airdrome now," he said. "We'll take a decision on the flight right on the spot proceeding from weather conditions. The distance between Providence Bay and Nom and is about 400 km, which means about 3 hours in the air."
Weather forecasters said that, at the time of reporting, the base of the clouds in Providence Bay was at 150 meters to 200 meters above the earth and gusts of wind reached 16 meters per second, TASS reports.
At Nom, the cloud level varied from 300 m to 500 m, with wind as strong as 13 meters per second and air temperature of 12 Centigrade.
During World War II, US planes would deliver cargoes to the USSR under Lend Lease program would make stopovers at Nom.
The International Round-the-World Oceanic Flight Arctic expedition started on July 3 from Russia's Samara region in the middle reach of the Volga River. Unique amphibious planes of Russian manufacture - two LA-8s, each having eight seats and cargo haulage capacity of up to 2.6 tonnes and a Borei with two seats and cargo capacity of up to 700 kg - take part in the circumflight.
The expedition has seven participants six Russians and a Frenchman. The party is led by cosmonaut Valery Tokaryov. The French participant is sea aviation pilot Loic Blaise.
The route of the expedition stretches across a distance of over 20,000 km and embraces Russia, Alaska, Canada, Greenland, the UK, Norway, Sweden, and Finland.
From the Finnish territory the expedition will return to the Samara region via Novgorod, Yaroslavl and Cheboksary. The traveling party is expected to make 50 stopovers along the way.
The main objective of the expedition is to hold a range of climatic, medical and biological research, the sounding of the earth from low altitudes, and the mapping out of future tourist routes in the Russian north.