round-the-world transpolar luxury charter flight was arranged by Hemphill World Cruises of Los Angeles. This time the flight was operated by CV-990A N5615 Polar Bird II, which departed Los Angeles International Airport in early December 1970 with 60 wealthy, elderly passengers with an average age of above 70 onboard and Captain Ross Zimmermann in command. Unlike Modern's first transpolar flight, where all passengers were male, this flight had a mixed, male/female passenger complement. As on the first flight two years earlier, former American Airlines first-class seats (configured four-abreast) replaced the usual slimline charter seats (configured five-abreast). However, unlike in 1968, there was also a lounge in the aircraft's forward fuselage. Similar to the pattern established in 1968, the flight routed over the North Pole (via Anchorage) before heading for Europe, Africa, South Asia and the South Pacific, where a stopover on Easter Island enabled passengers and crew to disembark and tour the island before proceeding to Santiago de Chile and Punta Arenas. Apart from there being far fewer en route stops (compared with 1968), the main difference between the Polarbyrd I and Polarbird II flights was that landing on McMurdo Station airfield's ice runway at the US Navy's Williams Field Antarctic research station in McMurdo Sound was no longer possible as the US Navy had begun restricting access to the airfield to essential flights only, in the wake of an incident two months earlier. This had resulted in a US Navy Constellation on a non-essential flight with 80 passengers and crew onboard crash landing there in a snowstorm and stranding its passengers and crew for several days. As a result of this incident, the US Navy had also withdrawn refuelling facilities at the airfield, which made commercial airline operations impractical. A last-minute appeal at the highest level of the US government failed to reverse the US Navy's decision. As a consequence (as well as owing to bad weather in the area at the time), when the flight departed Punta Arenas on 11 December on the last leg of the trip (before returning to the US) the closest Polarbird II came to the original South Pole experience of Polarbyrd I back in 1968 was to offer its passengers a round trip within a radius of the South Pole with views of the Antarctic icecap. Aircraft operated In its 29-year existence Modern Air operated the following aircraft types: Beechcraft Twin Bonanza Boeing