Record-breaker Polly Vacher and her distinctive Piper Cherokee Dakota flew into Jersey recently – part of a marathon fund-raising effort to visit every single airfield in Britain.

Greeted by JAC chairman Jon Gready and secretary Jennifer Bridge, Polly (63) met several club members during her brief visit before departing for Guernsey on the next leg of her gruelling trip.  Polly and her team have raised over £400,000 for the charity Flying Scholarship for the Disabled – most notably by her becoming the first person to fly solo around the world landing on all seven continents – 60,000 nautical miles in 357 days. 

Her latest record attempt, while confined to British airspace, was still a demanding test of flying skill, flight planning and logistics, requiring a team of supporters to ensure that she kept to her target of visiting all the airfields in the Jeppesen VFR Manual.  ‘We live in such a beautiful place,’ she said during her Jersey stopover. ‘I wanted to see all of the British Isles and promote the charity wherever I went.’

She set out on 21 May and by 31 July had completed the record-breaking challenge, visiting 221 airfields and notching up 158 flying hours.  Not that the trip was without incident.  ‘My worst landing was at Wickenby in Suffolk when I was being accompanied by the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.’ she recalled.  ‘I had to land quickly, so that they could fly over me, and I made a complete balls of it.  It was right in front of a lot of people and certainly dented my pride!’

She was not alone for the 19,000 nautical miles, carrying 163 passengers including members of her support team and some 96 disabled passengers.  On her trip to Jersey she was accompanied by Alderney resident and double amputee Russell Greenstock (himself no mean fund-raiser for the Jubilee Sailing Trust) and team colleague Katie Miles.

Polly, who also has the distinction of being the first woman to fly solo over the North Pole in a single engine aircraft and the first woman to fly solo in Antarctica in a single engine aircraft, did not learn to fly until she was 50.  Three years later she completed her first trans-Atlantic solo flight and in 2001 made a recordbreaking circumnavigation becoming the first woman to fly solo around the world via Australia and the Pacific. Her subsequent trips to the North Pole and Antarctica meant that she had landed on every single continent.

Awarded the MBE for her fund-raising efforts, Polly’s flights have enabled a large number of disabled people to secure a flying scholarship – a scheme whereby, through the mental and physical challenges of learning to fly a light aircraft, disabled people can rebuild their confidence, so enabling them to restore their self-esteem.  This in turn empowers them to explore their potential by extending their personal mental and physical boundaries.  Each scholarship student completes a six-week residential course of training, which includes ground school and up to 40 hours of dual and solo flying.  This is provided at no cost to the student and currently flight training takes place at flight schools in the USA and South Africa.

For further information log on to Polly Vacher’s website – www.worldwings.org.

This article is an extract from  Jersey Flyer Autumn 2007 (6.43 MB)