Flight Plan: The GV will leave Christchurch and head south, towards the South Pole, approaching 67° South and return back to Christchurch on one load of fuel, and a safety margin of fuel to spare. The NSF/NCAR GV would go farther if it could hold more fuel, unfortunately that is the limiting factor of how far south the NSF/NCAR GV can travel. It is surprisingly quite a distance from New Zealand to Antarctica.
The flight towards the South Pole from Christchurch will be approximately 8.5 hours, and will cover about 2800 miles (4500 km). During the flight, the NSF/NCAR GV will perform somewhere around 8 dips, which is how the vertical profiles are collected.
