Around The World In 45 Days With The Olympic Flame

When Chapman Freeborn Airchartering heard about an amazing, unique and not to say ambitious project to fly the Olympic Flame around the world for the first time ever, they immediately turned to Paragon Global Flight Support to provide operational partnership to deliver the whole package as required by the end client.

Although the project was of considerable magnitude, when Chapman Freeborn’s Darren Banham brought the idea to the attention of CF and Paragon Global’s management, their can-do response was of course, let’s run with it (excuse the pun!). Darren then set off to establish what would be involved and how it could be done. It became clear that the project was already growing and growing…..

On 3rd February 2003 after much work on the operational scope of this project, Darren submitted an initial bid for the charter and eventually toward the end of 2003, the bid was formally awarded – for two dedicated jumbos to fly the Olympic Flame around the world in 45 days, starting and finishing at the home of the flame in Greece and visiting every continent on route.

That was where the work really started and it is fair to say that the project was the single focus of all who were involved for the best part of 12 months, culminating in the day - 1st June 2004 when our Operations Manager, Barry Sargeant, together with Darren Banham, climbed on board the first of the 2 Boeing 747’s that had been chartered for the purpose as it took off from Gatwick Airport to start it’s epic voyage.

In the run up to the charter, Darren and Barry visited all of the stations to be visited on this epic charter around the world on the Torch Relay route to set up airport procedures, handling, press conferences and so on in numerous meetings with officials at the highest level. The purpose was to ensure that as much attention was paid to the considerable ground logistics – media liaison, safety and security, as well as managing the two aircrafts’ precious passengers and cargo.

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