Having previously flown a world tour going in a westerly direction, I decided to go eastward this time. And what better way to do it than borrowing an idea from the book 'Around the World in 80 Days' and doing it in 80 flights.
Now I'm far from the first person to do this, but I hadn't seen anybody try to follow Phileas Fogg's actual route. So a quick rereading of the book to grab as many place names as I can and off I went.
Out of Heathrow I head to Paris making sure to overfly Dover and Calais. Turning south takes me to the alps and Turin, again making sure to follow Fogg's route by flying over the alpine rail tunnel near Modane. The Vision Jet and the Daher TBM 930 were no doubt be the work horses for these trips, but I did get a few others in there.
A couple of stops and we reach Brindisi, Italy where Phileas Fogg caught a steamer for the Suez Canal. Here is where it gets funky. In order to get 80 flights of reasonable length I'll be taking slight deviations off course when the book has Fogg travelling over water. In this case I made it to the canal via Greece, before bouncing off the east and west coasts of the Red Sea to reach the Arabian Sea.
Stopping in Yemen, Oman, and Pakistan finally brings me to India, where I catch up with Fogg in Mumbai. Here's where the weather kicked in. I was doing the entire thing with Live Weather turned on, only manipulating the time of day so I could mainly fly in daytime hours. It just so happened that I caught my first major storm coming out of Mumbai, which wouldn't have been a problem except I was trying to follow the railway visually.
Fortunately the storms didn't last more than a few hours and I was able to trace the journey from the book across India and down to Singapore, with several stops along the way. It was around this time that the weekly community flights led by SeedyL were going to do a F18 flight so I used that as an excuse to learn a new plane and take it for a spin.
Had some good flying until Vietnam where the weather caught up to me again. Luckily by this point I had instrument landings down pat. There's nothing quite as interesting as flying blind through a storm knowing that there's a mountain ahead of you somewhere.
This is where I started covering some serious ground. Ten quick flights in the Vision covered China (inc old Hong Kong), South Korea, and Japan. Where the book has Phileas Fogg catching a steamer from Japan to San Francisco, I instead headed north to use the islands of Russia and Alaska as a bridge to cover the North Pacific.
Lots of pretty volcanoes and snow, and a chance to get some night flying in just for a change. 16 stops later I was in Oakland.
Back to following a railway track with my eyeballs and the Grand Caravan was a great choice for this. Storms, winds, and an occasional lack of talent on my behalf were nothing for this beast. It got used all the way to Chicago when I jumped back in the vision for a quick dash to the coast.
Again I deviated from the book and while Fogg caught a boat to Ireland, I was headed north for the circuitous route through Greenland, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands. It was now late enough in the season that the daylight was only around for a few hours and not very far above the horizon, so twilight flying was in order.
A last dash across the UK from Cork to London via Liverpool and I was done. I even made sure to park the plane in the same spot I'd orginally started from.
Flights started Oct 1 2025 and finshed Jan 3 2026. All flown in real time with Live Weather turned on.
