Hi Fly Malta has made history by becoming the first airline to ever operate the Airbus A330 on a flight to Antarctica. Last night, under the bright 24-hour sunlight in which Antarctica bathes during the Southern Hemisphere’s summer months, the widebody twinjet touched down on the Wolf’s Fang Runway in Queen Maud Land. The aircraft had flown in from Cape Town in South Africa, with the journey taking more than five and a half hours.
This special arrival is one of several reasons to be cheerful for Hi Fly as far as its Antarctica operations are concerned. Indeed, the charter carrier has also just celebrated having operated “five consecutive years of flights to the White Continent,” and its name is synonymous with Antarctic adventures.
The World’s First Antarctica-Bound A330 Flight
As confirmed in a statement released by the Maltese subsidiary of Portuguese charter carrier Hi Fly, the airline became the first operator to ever successfully land an Airbus A330 in Antarctica when its A330-300 registered as 9H-HFI touched down at Wolf’s Fang (WFR) last night. As pictured above, the widebody twinjet made a safe landing on the famous blue-ice runway under the command of Hi Fly’s Vice Chair, Carlos Mirpuri.
The aircraft had flown in from Cape Town in South Africa as part of an ongoing partnership with White Desert Antarctica, a tour operator with whom Hi Fly will be working throughout the 2025/26 Southern Hemisphere summer season. The carrier cites “additional ground support equipment that was not in place when Hi Fly began Antarctic flights” as a key reason for its ability to fly the twinjet to Wolf’s Fang, with Carlos Mirpuri going on to say that:
“Landing in Antarctica is never routine; every flight demands careful planning. (…) Introducing the A330 to this remote runway highlights our commitment to innovation, operational excellence, and the ongoing evolution of polar aviation.”
The Aircraft Was Only On The Ground For Four Hours
According to tracking data made available by Flightradar24, 9H-HFI lifted off from Cape Town International Airport (CPT) in South Africa at 8.25 pm yesterday evening. After more than five and a half hours of flying almost directly to the south, at a maximum cruising altitude of 36,000 feet above mean sea level, it touched down in Antarctica at 11.59 pm local time. Despite the late hour, the Airbus A330-300 was bathed in midnight sun.
This flight had operated under the number HFM801, and the return leg of the rotation, which was numbered as HFM802, was back in the skies just four hours later. Indeed, it took off this morning at 3:58 local time, and, after making faster progress on the journey north, landed in Cape Town at 11:03 local time, some five hours and five minutes later. At the time of writing, this remained the last flight for 9H-HFI, per Flightradar24’s tracking data.
According to present fleet data made available by ch-aviation, 9H-HFI is one of two examples of the Airbus A330-300 that Hi Fly Malta currently has at its disposal. It seats 313 passengers in a two-class layout, with space for 277 guests in economy class and 36 in business class. The jet is almost 19 years old.
Five Consecutive Years Of Antarctic Adventures
Long-term readers of Simple Flying will be all too aware that Hi Fly is a name that comes up more often than not when it comes to discussions of flights to and from Antarctica. Only a month ago, the carrier celebrated five consecutive years of operations in the region, although, as yesterday’s special flight marked the first rotation with the twin-engine Airbus A330, it had previously had to rely on the older the less efficient A340 quadjet.
The carrier actually flew one of its A340s over Antarctica on a separate mission long before it touched down there, with an April 2020 repatriation flight from Montevideo to Melbourne skirting the South Pole on its 16-hour odyssey. Then, in November 2021, the quadjet touched down in the region for the first time, and returned on multiple occasions. The purpose of these trips was to transport essential supplies, scientists and visitors to the region.
