Circling the globe in a Beechcraft King Air on an extended five-month mission is a profound and addictive pursuit.
Talking with Inuit people living in the stunning remoteness of Canada’s massive but sparsely populated northern territory of Nunavut.
The happy greeting with smiles visible through hazmat suits in Bangkok, Thailand, after getting the sense an aircraft landing during the COVID-19 pandemic could be unwelcomed.
Having lunch along the Amazon River at a local family’s remote cabin, adorned with multiple jaguar pelts, after landing in Iquitos, Peru, the world’s largest city that cannot be reached by road.
“The more we travel and the more places we see, the more we realize that the things that bind us all as people and communities across the world are much greater than the things that divide us. We all want the same things: we want our kids to be happy, we want to put bread on our tables,” said Dick Bailey, a 2019 Beechcraft King Air 350ER owner and pilot who earlier in 2022 completed a polar circumnavigation attempt with his daughter and fellow pilot Kelly Hinerava Bailey.
“We live in an absolutely astonishing world. The beauty of the world seen from the air on a trip like this – you’re just never the same after that.”
While the father-daughter team wasn’t able to accomplish their intended mission of an FAI sanctioned polar circumnavigation – permitting restrictions in Chile due to the pandemic kept them from crossing the South Pole – Dick reports they had “a heck of a lot of fun” planning and making the trip that spanned five months from September 2021 to February 2022.
They accomplished the trip in three phases so they could return home several times for work and family obligations. They landed in 19 countries and changed time zones 29 times while accumulating 32,445 nautical miles and 121 hours flight time. They praised the comfort, reliability and performance of the King Air 350ER, which averaged 268 kts ground speed and a 640 lbs/hr average fuel consumption.
“Our trip demonstrated once again the reliability and performance of the storied and legendary King Air,” Kelly said. “As a daughter and co-pilot on this amazing journey, I am proud of the skills I acquired as an aviator, and I am grateful for the experience and discovery of this astonishing world we are so blessed to inhabit.”
The Crew
Dick, age 68, has been flying since he was 16 years old. “I have always loved flying and loved airplanes,” he said. “I was out at the hangar walking around in my hometown in Louisiana and an instructor asked me if I wanted a job sweeping the hangars. I was 16 and that was my first job. They paid me $1 an hour or $2 an hour if I put it into flying lessons so I put it all into flying lessons.”
He has an ATP certificate and his multi-engine rating, and he’s also a flight instructor. Kelly, age 39, has a commercial pilot’s license, a multi-engine rating and is working on her King Air type rating.
“Kelly’s been my student for many years and now she’s a superb pilot in her own right,” Dick said.
They’ll both be heading to Florida together this month for recurrent training at Flight Safety.
Dick splits his time between Southern California – the plane is based at Camarillo Airport (KCMA) – and Tahiti. He first visited the largest island in French Polynesia with his family as a child and he returned in the early 1970s, after he had earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard University.
He launched a hospitality company inspired by the idea that luxury travel and environmental and cultural protection needn’t be mutually exclusive that has grown into French Polynesia’s largest luxury hotel operator. Dick is considered a pioneer in environmental protection and sustainability, and his company owns and operates several resort properties in French Polynesia.
Dick also founded a nonprofit called Tetiaroa Society, dedicated to exploring innovative solutions to the world’s most pressing issues relating to sustainable interdependence, and Te Mana O Te Moana, a nonprofit that strives to protect the Polynesian marine environment. (The Baileys said they purchased carbon offsets for their circumnavigation and used sustainable fuel mixtures where available.)
Kelly grew up on the South Pacific island. She has a Bachelor of Science in Geology from Sonoma State University and earned her MBA from Pepperdine University. She lives in Seattle, Washington, and operates four jewelry boutiques in the French Polynesian islands that sell a contemporary luxury line of Tahitian pearl jewelry that she designs and creates.
Kelly has been flying with her father since her college days. They flew TBMs for 15 years before moving into the King Air 350 in 2019.
The father and daughter were the only two to fly on this trip, but they did have additional help from family members who served as crew engineers. Dick’s four brothers flew on the airplane at various times during the round-the-world trip. One brought first aid experience (which fortunately wasn’t needed), one mechanical knowledge, and two became certified COVID testers. The Baileys registered their aircraft as a mobile testing unit, allowing them to test themselves and certified COVID test results for any countries that required it.
The Aircraft
After flying Daher TBM aircraft for several years, Dick felt his family had outgrown the single-engine turboprop.
“I have three kids and seven grandchildren, and while I don’t plan on taking the entire clan all at once it was time to step up to something with a larger cabin, more versatility and two engines,” he said.
He purchased the King Air 350ER new from the factory in 2019, knowing that he’d use the extended range features for trips to Tahiti, domestic flights for travel and tourism events and, of course, a circumnavigation attempt or two.
“Domestically, Kelly and I have flown several trips across the U.S. nonstop. If you’re not in a hurry, this airplane can carry 10 people very comfortably across the country,” Dick said.
He worked with Textron Aviation’s Special Missions group for the engine, landing gear and higher gross weight takeoff upgrades.
The Baileys report that the King Air performed nearly flawlessly on the polar circumnavigation mission.
“We flew two legs that were 2,000 nautical miles each over the Pacific and not many turboprops would have delivered the incredible performance that the King Air gave us,” Dick said. “We landed after each of those 2,000-nautical-mile legs with more than an hour of fuel in the tanks. That’s just amazing performance.”
They said they had one pressurization safety valve malfunction over the Pacific between Easter Island and Santiago, Chile.
“We started to lose cabin pressure over the Pacific,” Dick said. “We had our oxygen masks on while we were troubleshooting the problem. We eventually were able to get the safety valve reset and continue on but we did have a cold sweat for about 30 minutes. When we landed in Santiago, we had their maintenance take a look at it, and they couldn’t repeat the fault. We’ve never had a problem since; sometimes it’s just a ghost in the machine and that’s where your preparation pays off.”
The Route & Highlights
This wasn’t the Baileys’ first circumnavigation. In 2017, they flew the TBM 900 on a mostly overland route.
“We figured our mindset would be OK, done that,” Dick said. “Not at all. All we could think about was doing it again, so it was natural to go for it in the King Air. Now that we’ve done that, all we think about is doing it again. I think we’re going to be serial circumnavigators now.”
Kelly said there were a lot of differences this time around, because they were flying a different airplane and because of the global pandemic.
She said the King Air 350ER was much more robust and comfortable for the long flights (their longest leg was 8.1 hours from Easter Island to Santiago). Having a lavatory was a huge help with staying hydrated; it allowed them to not restrain their water intake as much as they had in the TBM.
They also added a high-frequency radio to avoid the long stretches without communication that they experienced on the last circumnavigation. Next time, they said, they’ll also add equipment that allows for true magnetic navigation.
Both pilots said they were better prepared for what to expect, from understanding the slot system many international airports use, to communicating more clearly with different accents and knowing to always get their handler’s name and phone number before leaving the airport.
They also knew to not spend time in advance planning transportation and accommodations because the schedule could too easily shift. That was possible because their temporary crew members assisted with making those arrangements.
They spent a year planning the overflight permits and landing permits but they had to remain flexible as new waves of COVID and other events altered their routes. They relied on the dispatch team at Sun Air Jets, where they hangar their aircraft in Camarillo.
“The logistical planning required a ground team that was available 24 hours a day,” Kelly said. “Most of the overflight, landing permit and flight plans were filed without incident, including one that skimmed Afghanistan, and one that diverted us into China, though a few required last minute changes. One such incident happened between Chile and Peru, leading us to a place none of us had ever heard of: Iquitos, Peru. On the edge of the Amazon River, it is the largest city in the world that cannot be reached by road. Events such as this created an unpredictable and exciting adventure.”
COVID presented many obstacles during the planning stages and during the trip. The Baileys delayed the start of the mission by a year, but by mid-2021 it seemed like cases in the U.S. were continuing to lower so they decided to go for it. While their expectation that there would be fewer people traveling was accurate, they hadn’t considered that areas of the world were already being hit with the next wave of the virus, well before the U.S. experienced it.
When asked for their most vivid memory of the trip, they both agree it was leaving Easter Island in the evening and witnessing the Southern Hemisphere’s most epic constellations followed by an amazing sunrise before they landed in Santiago.
Among their other trip highlights was visiting the Mayan ruins in Belize as well as staying at two Francis Ford Coppola resorts there; exploring museums and culture during an abnormal stay of five days in Helsinki, Finland (waiting on permits); and the views when landing in Churchill, Manitoba; Resolute Bay, Nunavut; Reykjavik, Iceland; Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan; Ushuaia, Argentina; Jakarta, Indonesia; and Tahiti.
The ultimate highlight, though, was sharing the experience.
“We both love travel, we both love flying and we love the challenge of it,” Dick said.
Kelly agreed and added: “My dad is one of the biggest reasons I started flying and we have a lot of fun flying together.”