Getting ready for take-off
The team will be conducting test flights from the Base-Camp every day the weather permits. These will allow them to continue testing the wings, engines, oxygen and communications at varying heights and in varying conditions, right up to the moment of the record attempt itself.

Final preparations for the record-breaking flight will begin the night before with the daily meteorological check. This satellite phone call between Bear and experts at Everest’s south-side Base-Camp, will analyse the latest weather predictions sent by the Bracknell weather station in the UK – predictions that can forecast wind speeds for every 1000 feet of altitude on Everest. If conditions look stable, with summit wind forecasts of less than 20mph, the team will get ready to take-off at first light the next day. The timing of this is critical: it is a call you cannot get wrong.

Overnight all the machinery will be prepared and fuelled, batteries will be charged, wings checked, oxygen measured, kit laid out, procedures rehearsed. Survival gear will be checked, satellite phones and throat-microphones will be tested and emergency plans will be run through one last time.

A date with destiny
In the morning, a light breakfast will be eaten (without too many fluids – for obvious reasons!) and then the weather will be checked once again. If conditions still look right, the kit will be laid out for a final check and a last briefing will take place – all done in temperatures of around -3ºC. 

By 4am, the team will be ready to go. The Base-Camp team will help the pilots into their 100kg backpacks and then the pilots will make final adjustments before soaring into the Himalayan sky – this could involve a 150-yards-long run and will definitely be the hardest take-off any of them have ever undertaken. 

Once airborne, the team will talk to each other, checking oxygen airflow and climb rates and slowly moving north through the valleys into the shadow of Everest, still towering above them. It will be the most carefully defined balance of fuel, speed, wind, power and skill. Once they have climbed high enough, they will turn for the final approach north over the treacherous Nuptse wall. Flying together at 100mph, God-willing they will have taken GKN into the history of the world’s highest mountain.