Here’s a way to earn a free beverage from your aviation friends in the bar. How many people have flown light airplanes solo over the earth’s poles? It’s fewer than you think. Only five have accomplished this incredible flight. And now, thanks to Robert DeLaurentis’s recent journey, one of them was in a Twin Commander.

Every pilot knows that making a difficult flight with a crew is one thing, but doing it solo, that’s quite another. With his return to San Diego on August 10 of this year, DeLaurentis successfully completed a journey in his 1983 Model 900 that covered more than 26,000 nautical miles through South America, over the South Pole, across to Africa, up through Europe, and over the North Pole before coming down through Alaska and back home again. And he did almost all of it, including the daunting polar crossings, alone.

The flight was a long time in the making. DeLaurentis started planning the trip in 2015, soon after he returned from his first flight around the world in a Piper Malibu. That trip was met with numerous mechanical issues, including an engine failure. He was able to complete the trip, but DeLaurentis said he didn’t have faith in the Malibu to take him farther. So, he set out looking for a more reliable, better-performing airplane that could carry the fuel needed for the arduous flight across the South Pole. DeLaurentis quickly learned about the Honeywell TPE331 engine, and was then drawn to Twin Commanders. He picked up a Model 900 in late 2016 and got to work modifying it for the trip.

Those modifications included the MT five-bladed propeller STC, RVSM STC, Dash 10 engine upgrade, long-range fuel in the cabin, LED lights, new battery, Amsafe seatbelt airbags, Avidyne IFD 550/450, Avidyne AMX240 audio panel, Avidyne AXP340 ADS-B transponder, FreeFlight ADS-B In, Shadin fuel computer, Astronics Max-Viz infrared camera, Peter Schiff pressurization system, and L3 ESI 500 backup attitude indicator. “There wasn’t another dollar I could have spent that would make it go higher, faster, or farther,” he said.

DeLaurentis set out from San Diego on November 16, 2019, considerably later than he had anticipated. As with most projects, the timeline proved to be too aggressive. With so many modifications happening in such a short time, there were bound to be delays. “My biggest mistake was trying to rush people,” he said. “I thought it would take six months to plan for it, and I was really off. It took 18 months. I was pushing the mechanics to go faster and I don’t think that’s ever a good idea.”

Although it’s possible to get around the world in just a few days when you’re flying 300 knots, DeLaurentis planned the trip so as to overfly the poles at the optimum times. And obviously that means those legs would have to be flown almost six months apart. His goal was to fly over the South Pole prior to the end of last year, in part because he had promised AOPA he would do so on the organization’s eightieth anniversary. He accomplished the flight on December 16, 2019.

That epic leg from Ushuaia, Argentina, and back took 18 hours, and included some harrowing moments. Over the poles GPS signals can be unreliable, requiring the pilot to revert to pilotage and dead reckoning. It’s not unlike the cone of confusion over a VOR. DeLaurentis knew this was going to happen prior to the flight, but it doesn’t make it any easier when it does occur. He also debated what to do when, upon returning to Argentina, he found the weather to be lower than expected. Faced with the prospect of having to shoot an approach after such a long flight, DeLaurentis opted to drop below the cloud layer and navigate the rest of the leg visually. His HF radio wasn’t working and he didn’t want the communications hassles, so he chopped the power and flew the last 50 miles at a leisurely 130 knots.

It was back on the ground reflecting on the South Pole leg that DeLaurentis really fell in love with his Twin Commander. He calls the airplane Citizen of the World and wrote this about it on AOPA’s blog:

In Europe DeLaurentis was able to relax, and find his footing, in part because Coronavirus slowed his plans. He was quarantined in Spain for weeks while the virus spread quickly through the country. Finally released, he headed north to Sweden, where the airplane underwent the only unscheduled maintenance on the trip. A starter generator on one of the engines failed, and a local operator there was able to have a part overnighted from Denmark and then installed it the next day. They also fixed a slowly leaking brake caliper DeLaurentis said he wouldn’t have otherwise worried about if the airplane hadn’t been in the shop already. Over both poles, five continents, and 26,000 miles those were the only mechanical issues.

Avionics proved to be another story. As DeLaurentis prepared to cross the North Pole he knew his avionics would once again prove unreliable as they were when he flew across the bottom of the world. But this leg turned out to be even more taxing than expected. Approaching the North Pole his GPS signal failed, then his PFD, and finally his radios. And unlike the South Pole, where things quickly recaptured, up north his navigation didn’t reacquire until almost the coast of Alaska, nearly five hours later. The whole time the only thing that stayed reliable and true was his iPad. And his Twin Commander.

“You never know what a plane’s performance is going to be when you take it that far,” he said. “That Commander was pretty impressive overall when you think what I pulled off.” Climbing fast when over gross, flying in extreme cold and heat, and doing it at more than 300 knots is a pretty impressive set of numbers.

DeLaurentis said he thinks it shows how relevant the airplane still is, and that its capabilities remain unmatched. “I think it’s a prideful moment of the community. I took it to the ends of the Earth and it worked, for the most part, perfectly.”

By the numbers: