Record flight attempt around globe grounded by India

It took months of meticulous planning, fine-tuning flight routes and international negotiations.
But in one bureaucratic haggle, a 25-year-old New Jersey entrepreneur's attempt to break a world record by circling the globe in his jet plane in under 81 hours, 40 minutes was grounded today by the Indian government.
"The stars were aligned, the winds were right behind us...until we hit a complete disaster," Jared Isaacman said on his cell phone from Doha, the capital city in Qatar in Southwest Asia.
Isaacman, a self-made multimillionaire from Washington Township in Warren County, had set out in his Cessna Citation Mustang, Model 510, late Friday night, with co-pilots Douglas Demko, 26, and Shaun Leach, 27, both of Pennsylvania.
The pilots had raised more than $40,000 in pledges and donations for the Make-A-Wish Foundation of New Jersey. They'd expected to return to Morristown Airport early Monday morning, ahead of schedule, after traveling more than 22,000 miles. They were to make 19 refueling stops across some 15 countries.
That would beat the current record for an around-the-world flight for a jet of 3,000 to 6,000 kilograms, set by M. Naviede, who left and returned to Manchester, England, in 1991.
But today, after a 30-minute refueling stop in Karachi, Pakistan, turned into a 12-hour delay, Isaacman's record-breaking was crushed.
The pilots had touched ground in Pakistan at 12:30 a.m. Eastern Standard time, and awaited permission from Indian aviation authorities to continue through their airspace. Denied the required permits, the pilots were told they could not fly over India until Monday, said Walter Garner, a pilot monitoring the trip from Allentown, Pa.
"It was Sunday, and they had a three-day holiday, and they didn't want to play," Garner said of the Indian authorities. "We tried everything...to try to figure out a way around India, but with the range of the airplane, there was no way."
At about noon today, they flew to Qatar to rest and refuel. They're considering redeparting Tuesday, in an attempt to start over from there.
30/03/08 Julie O'Connor/The Star-Ledger - NJ.com, USA

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Categories: Foreign Mar 2008