The Planned Route
 
Planned Primary Route
The National Aeronautical Association (NAA) allow only a primary route and a alternate route for calculating distance in a record attempt. You are allowed to make additional stops, but every listed stop must be made for the record to be valid. No Plan B. Senator Web’s office and the folks at Ascension Island came through, and permission to land was in the works, Paul at Bethlehem Air Service did his part, but the folks who run The Royal Mail Ship St. Helena said they could not get permission from their insurance company to haul the fuel. No fuel means, a flight to Ascension Island isn’t going to happen on this trip. It also means; we need to figure out another way across the Atlantic Ocean. Santa Maria Airport in the Azores, a jump across to St. John in Canada, and then one more leg to Norfolk. The leg from Dakar to Santa Maria offers the option of a stop in Tenerife North airport, if I had to stop for some reason on that leg, flying from Santa Maria to St. John there is the possibility of a stop at Flores Island about 300 miles beyond Santa Maria. The Flores Island Airport reduces the open water distance from over 1300NM to just over 1000NM. Even the flight from Colombo, Sri Lanka to the Seychelles has the option of a stop in the Maldives. There is an amazing number of airports in odd out of the way places, unfortunately, most don’t have AVGAS on hand.