A polar route is an aircraft route across the uninhabited polar ice cap regions. The term "polar route" was originally applied to great circle navigation routes between Europe and the west coast of North America which began to be routine in the 1950s. After several pioneering flights in the 1930s and 1940s, the first commercial polar route crossing was made by an SAS aircraft in 1954.
The Arctic
Early years In August 1935, the Soviet aviator Sigizmund Levanevsky and his two crewmen attempted a transpolar flight from Moscow, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union to San Francisco, California. The flight was aborted because of technical issues before they reached the North Pole. In 1936, Levanevsky and navigator Victor Levchenko completed a more-than-19,000-kilometre (11,800 mi) multistage flight from Los Angeles to Moscow in a Vultee V-1A floatplane, thus proving the possibility of an air route between the United States and the Soviet Union via the Bering Strait. Another Soviet pilot Valery Chkalov and his crew were the first to fly non-stop from Europe to the American Pacific Coast. Their flight from Moscow to Vancouver, Washington, United States, via the North Pole on a Tupolev ANT-25 single-engine plane (June 18–20, 1937) took 63 hours to complete. The distance covered was 8,811 kilometres (5,475 mi). The following month, another Soviet crew led by Mikhail Gromov retraced the transpolar route, extending the distance to the world record-breaking 10,148 kilometers (6,302 miles), landing near San Jacinto, California, in the United States. In August of the same year, another Soviet crew led by Sigizmund Levanevsky started its long distance transpolar flight from Moscow to Fairbanks, Alaska; the radio communication with the aircraft broke off beyond the North Pole, and all subsequent search missions failed. In October 1946, a modified B-29 flew 15,163 kilometres (9,422 mi) nonstop from Oahu, Hawaii, to Cairo, Egypt, in less than 40 hours, further proving the capability of routing airlines over the polar icecap.
The Cold War
Of the commercial airlines, SAS was first: their Douglas DC-6B flights between Los Angeles and Copenhagen, via Kangerlussuaq and Winnipeg, started on November 15, 1954. Canadian Pacific DC-6Bs started Vancouver–Amsterdam in 1955, then Pan Am and TWA started West Coast to Paris/London in 1957. SAS was first again, flying Europe to Tokyo via Anchorage with Douglas DC-7Cs in February 1957; Air France Lockheed L-1649 Starliner (which was the final version of the Lockheed Constellation) and KLM DC-7C aircraft followed in 1958. Air France was the first to operate commercial jet service over the North Pole on the routing Tokyo – Anchorage – Hamburg – Paris on 18 February 1960 using Boeing 707-328 Intercontinental equipment. During the Cold War, the Arctic region was a buffer zone between the Soviet Union and North America. Civilian flights from Europe to the Asian Far East were prohibited from crossing the Eastern Bloc countries, Soviet Union or China, and had to fly either via the Middle East or across Arctic North America and Greenland with a refueling stop in Anchorage. These Cold War tracks extended from the northern Alaskan coast across Greenland to Europe. In 1978, Korean Air Lines Flight 902 operated with a Boeing 707 was shot down over the USSR by a Soviet Air Force fighter aircraft after the flight crew made gross navigational errors attempting to fly the assigned polar route. In April 1967 Japan Air Lines (JAL) began an experimental service between Tokyo and Europe via Moscow across Siberia. This service used an Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-114, with one JAL flight crew and mixed JAL and Aeroflot cabin crew. However, Japan Air Lines dropped the service in 1969. During the Cold War, Anchorage International Airport (ANC) in Alaska was a technical stop for a number of airlines flying the polar route between western Europe and Tokyo. According to the July 1, 1983 edition of the Worldwide Official Airline Guide (OAG), Air France, British Airways, Japan Air Lines (JAL), KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, Lufthansa, Sabena and Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) were all operating flights between Japan and western Europe which included a stop in Anchorage. Most of these international airlines were operating earlier model Boeing 747 aircraft on the route at this time, although Sabena and SAS were instead operating McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30 aircraft on their respective polar route services via Anchorage. U.S. based air carrier Western Airlines also flew a polar route during the early 1980s between London Gatwick Airport and Honolulu using DC-10-30 aircraft, with these flights also making a stop in Anchorage. The only airline that still flies this type of route between Europe and Anchorage is Condor Airlines, seasonal service between Frankfurt (EDDF) and Anchorage. This will soon be joined by a flight by Eurowings, also from Frankfurt, using an Airbus A330. Finnair was the first airline to fly non-stop via the polar route without a technical stop. This service began in 1983 and was flown with a McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30ER wide body jetliner between Tokyo and Helsinki. United States Boeing B-52 aircraft operated in the Arctic Ocean region almost continuously in the 1960s as part of Operation Chrome Dome and in later decades as part of readiness exercises. A number of Western reconnaissance aircraft also conducted missions regularly along the Soviet Union's northern coast. Russian Long-Range Aviation now perform some of the same types of training flights, testing the readiness of Alaskan Command and Royal Canadian Air Force interceptors.
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