- Jennifer Murray looks with delight at the shiny red helicopter sitting in a hangar at Bell Helicopter. It's a sweet ride worth about $1.6 million. But it's where Murray will take this helicopter that makes her smile.
Murray has set records as the first woman to pilot a helicopter around the world, in 1997, and the first woman to fly a helicopter solo around the world, in 2000. Now, Murray, 63, will attempt her greatest challenge yet -- to fly around the world via the North and South Poles. The trip will take about 5 1/2 months and will span 30,000 miles through extreme weather conditions.
"It's a huge challenge, and there aren't that many great challenges left to do," she said. "This is the big one."
Murray and co-pilot Colin Bodill, who are both from the United Kingdom and have flown together several times since meeting in 1998, have spent two weeks training at the Bell Helicopter factory in Fort Worth to get accustomed to their new helicopter. The Bell 407 was chosen for its power and ability to fly at high altitudes, which will be necessary in the extreme weather conditions on the trip.
"In the polar region, you've got weather that can change dramatically without warning," Murray said. "It's very remote, and help is quite a long way away. "And there aren't any hotels in Antarctica."
Bell Helicopter Vice President Tom Hendricks, left, talks with helicopter pilots Colin Bodill and Jennifer Murray recently while the pilots were in Fort Worth preparing to fly this Bell 407 around the world via the North and South Poles.
On Oct. 22, the duo will leave New York, taking off from the Liberty Heliport. They will fly down the East Coast, through Central and South America to the South Pole, where they hope to land Dec. 17 -- exactly 100 years after the Wright brothers' first flight.
Then, they will head to the North Pole via the West Coast of the Americas and complete the journey in New York. Their trip is funded mostly by corporate sponsors. Images from the trip will be available on their Web site --
www.polarfirst.com -- which they hope will be used by students to learn about environmental conservation.
"We're doing this with the World Wildlife Fund," Murray said. "We'll be visiting World Wildlife sites and visiting with scientists and biologists and running a very active Web site with a prime focus toward schools."
Before coming to Fort Worth, Murray and Bodill had other training to prepare for the trip, which has been two years in the making.
In the United Kingdom, they underwent what Murray called "the dunker course" -- learning what to do if they have to make an emergency landing in the water. The training involved dropping them upside down in a small capsule into a tank of water so they could learn how to escape from the cockpit of the helicopter underwater. Murray described it as horrid.
"And just as you're feeling good about it, they turn all the lights out on you and it's pitch dark," Bodill said.
They also traveled to Alaska during the winter for a wilderness survival course. The temperature was about minus 53 degrees Fahrenheit.
"You take a tea bag and put in a boiling cup of water and in 30 seconds it's a block of ice," Bodill said. "That was quite interesting, to say the least."
Murray said the hardest part of preparing for the trip is leaving her family. She has already said goodbye to her three children and will say goodbye to her husband in New York.
She said this is her last great helicopter adventure, but her co-pilot is not convinced. "I've heard that before," Bodill said.