EVO Assists G650ER Operator in 1st Part 91 Polar Flight

Aviation support services firm EVO Jet Services facilitated the approval and planning process for a Gulfstream G650ER to be the first aircraft operated under Part 91 to fly a polar route. The G650ER flew from New York’s Stewart International Airport to Beijing, China, along Polar Route 3 early last month. Flight time was 12 hours 8 minutes.

“Although EVO has been supporting commercial airlines along the polar routes for 15 years, this time-saving route has never been used by executive jet operators, until now,” the company told AIN. The unidentified Gulfstream operator began working with EVO Jet last year to start the approval process.

“The largest challenge has always been selecting and disqualifying suitable alternates,” said EVO Jet director of services Chris Cartwright. “EVO has long-standing agreements for airport services and fuel at all Russian, Chinese, Mongolian and Canadian airports. We speak with them all regularly and survey suitability.”

Before the G650ER flight last month, EVO ran table-top exercises with the operator to ensure Russian, Chinese and Mongolian permits could be obtained for a route traditionally viewed as commercial. “The civil aviation permit authorities at these countries prefer to reroute you when you request polar for a Part 91 flight,” said Cartwright. “This is a combination of concern about alternate planning and pure habit of trying to keep flights along more traditional northern routes. The dress rehearsal was done to prove we could obtain the polar routing we all wanted. Once we succeeded with the table-top plan, we just waited for the operator to plan its next trip to Beijing.”

The company is seeing a renewed interest in these routes as business jets get longer ranges and certain city pairs make perfect sense to connect via polar routes. “We are now speaking with Gulfstream and some G650 and G650ER operators to plan a polar route users group,” said Cartwright. “We are excited about the possibilities of assisting these long-range jets to capitalize on such routings into the future. We feel EVO, with our long history of Polar route successes and firsts, can facilitate such operations without any glitches.”