became part of a ground party led by Lieutenant J. Höver, providing technical services for the Roald Amundsen, Lincoln Ellsworth and Umberto Nobile Arctic Expedition, ultimately a successful attempt to fly the lighter-than-air airship, Norge, over the North Pole from Svalbard to Teller, Alaska. Although he was a highly regarded mechanic, Balchen's main role was to provide survival training to the Italian crew members as well as to teach them to ski. In a last-minute decision by Amundsen, he was not chosen to be on the record-breaking dirigible flight as Nobile was in charge of picking the crew, which already had a complement of 23. Support of Byrd's North Pole flight After observing the crash of the Fokker trimotor, Josephine Ford, belonging to one of his competitors, Lieutenant Commander Richard E. Byrd of the U.S. Navy, Amundsen asked Balchen to help in preparing the airplane for a flight to the North Pole. Under Balchen's supervision, the damaged aircraft skis were repaired with improvised wooden supports from a lifeboat's oars and some survival gear was loaned to Byrd for the flight. This enabled Byrd and his pilot, Floyd Bennett to continue with their attempt to fly to the North Pole and back on 9 May 1926. In 1926, under the sponsorship of Joseph Wanamaker, Balchen officially joined the Byrd party, as the co-pilot and navigator, with the pilot Floyd Bennett, flying the Josephine Ford on a tour to more than 50 American cities, thereby promoting commercial aviation as a safe, reliable and practical means of transportation. Following this tour Balchen was hired by Anthony Fokker as a test pilot for the Fokker Aircraft Company at the Teterboro Airport, New Jersey. Trans-Atlantic Flight On 29 June 1927, Balchen, as the co-pilot with the chief pilot Bert Acosta; the flight engineer, George Otto Noville and the navigator and air flight organizer, Commander Byrd, flew a U.S. Post Office airmail aircraft, Fokker trimotor America, across the Atlantic Ocean from Roosevelt Field on Long Island. Due to Acosta's reported lack of ability to successfully fly via aircraft instruments, and the foul weather for most of this flight, Balchen did most of the flying. Bad weather and low visibility over France made landing at the Paris airport impractical, despite their repeated attempts. When their aircraft was running low on aviation gasoline, Balchen decided to fly back to the western coast of France, and there he landed