Amelia Rose Earhart, a TV news anchor from Colorado, will take to the skies next month, to recreate and complete her namesake’s ill-fated historic round-the-world trip.
Her flight will cover 28,000 miles with 17 stops in 14 different countries with flight data and details being streamed live during the entire trip via Inmarsat SwiftBroadband.
It is now more than 75 years since aviation pioneer Amelia Earhart disappeared over the South Pacific in 1937. There have been many theories as to what went wrong, but communications and navigation problems probably meant that she was unable to find her landing site on Howland Island.
Amelia’s plane vanished and she was never found.
Now Amelia Rose, who isn’t related to the original Amelia, aims to recreate and complete the historic flight, starting from California, USA, on 26 June.
Her Pilatus PC12-NG aircraft will be equipped with the latest Primus Apex avionics technology from Honeywell Aerospace, including satcom equipment. Both Inmarsat and Satcom1 have joined forces to enable Amelia Rose to keep fans updated on her progress with tweets, news and videos.
The cockpit will be fitted with GoPro cameras so people can watch her flight in real-time.
The satcom system comprises a Honeywell Aspire 200 Data Unit with an Intermediate Gain Antenna, capable of one channel of SwiftBroadband voice/multiple simultaneous streaming data services of up to 128 kbps or up to 332 kbps background data.
This is supported by EMTEQ’s eConnect router and Satcom1’s AvioIP software suite as a stand-alone solution. This setup will enable Amelia to live-stream the flight with optimised video transmission technology that is also a part of Satcom1’s coming upgrade of AvioIP.
The route will take her across the US before heading south into the Caribbean. It will then cover the North East of Brazil, the South Atlantic Ocean, the heart of the African continent, the Indian Ocean, the Pacific Islands, and the Atlantic Ocean before returning back to California.
The project is expected to take approximately 102 hours of flight time and, if she completes it, Amelia Rose will become the youngest woman to fly around the world in a single-engine aircraft.
The flight also aims to to highlight the “Fly with Amelia” Foundation – a non-profit organisation set up in 2013 by Amelia Rose to share her passion for flying.
The foundation provides flight scholarships for young women aged 16-18, helps build STEM-based (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) educational curricula, and opens up opportunities for young people to be involved in aviation.
The original Amelia Earhart was the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean and set many other records. She also wrote best-selling books about her flying experiences and was instrumental in the formation of “The Ninety-Nines”, an organisation for female pilots.
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