Dodged Muggers and Terrorists, Overcame Bureaucrats, Set Record -- Beaten by Monsoon

By Aero-News Senior Correspondent Kevin R.C. "Hognose" O'Brien

We just got the word that the Global Eagle world flight came to an end -- in October. At Aero-News we were pummeled this way and that by the events of 2004, and we didn't get the press release. We don't think there was a press release, actually, as the demoralized Global Eagle team trickled back to their day jobs. So it was news to us, and no one had mentioned it at the rotary forum.com web site (where I hang out sometimes), so we reckon it's probably news to you, too.

After a hiatus between June and October, forced by rampaging Indian monsoons, Global Eagle pilot Barry Jones planned to return to a diminished goal: he was now going to take the gyro to Australia, still an awe-inspiring distance to fly in an open gyroplane. "The change of plan for Expedition Global Eagle was as hard a pill to swallow as the day I crashed Eagle 1," Barry posted in a European gyro pilots' forum, before he returned to India. "Those who are very close to me know only too well how much of an impact the cancellation of the World Flight had on me personally and how desperately we fought to make something of the Expedition by pressing on to Sydney."

But he was caught between the Scylla of Canadian winter and the Charybdis of his promise to return to his military duties in 2005 (many of his team members were also soldiers on sabbatical, compounding the problem). A Sydney flight had echoes of the great MacRobertson race, and had the benefit of being possible -- barely -- in the time available. If everything started going right.

But everything kept going wrong. When he finally caught up with his Magni VPM 16 gyro in Guwahati, India, the monsoons got one last, devastating lick in: his gyro had been immersed in floodwaters. The avionics and engine control unit were ruined. Even the flight controls, which are mechanical, didn't feel right. Repairs on site were not practical, and the team pulled the plug on Global Eagle.

The odds were always against success. Every obstacle in the air and on land and sea seemed to rear up in front of British Army Warrant Officer 2 Barry Jones ("Beej" to his friends), a seasoned helicopter pilot who was going to do something no-one has ever done: a world circumnavigation by gyroplane. He had problems with regulatory Jobsworths in England, their counterparts in the Byzantine bureaucracy of India and everywhere in between, delays that cost him key staff members, threats from terrorists that forced a rerouting, a mugging, a mission change, a crash, being made to exchange his modern gyro for an older one, and more complexities and hazards than a James Bond film festival. Barry can forevermore introduce himself as "Jones. Barry Jones," after this.

B arry's catalog of problems included "...a forced landing in the Alpine Mountains, a number of technical faults, a number of additional landings due to strong winds across the Mediterranean Sea and a carefully crafted political situation to allow me to cross Israel into Jordan. ...Sand Storms in the Saudi desert ... the ‘mother of all Sand Storms’ in western India but not before the ‘mother of all sea crossings’.... some long flights and some very scary ones... and of course I was on a ‘weight loss program’ throughout...." the last comment being a reference to the digestive tract problems that plague travellers.

The "mother of all sea crossings" from Muscat (Oman) to Karachi (Pakistan) is a record, and almost certainly the longest over-water flight of all time in a gyroplane (no one has ever crossed the Atlantic or Pacific in one of these machines -- Barry had hoped to be first). Barry was forced away from the logical shorter crossing of the Persian Gulf by the tense situation along the Pakistan/Iran border.

The problems included the intransigence of the British CAA/PFA, which banned the use of the original planned aircraft, the latest Magni M16 V2000, on the grounds that it was not approved. The PFA continues to sanction the worst deathtraps in the air, and bans some of the safest rotorcraft, in its willful ignorance -- but that's a story for another time. Barry and the Global Eagle team were also pestered by immature computer hackers, who in one case broke into his own account, spreading chaos among his supporters. But what finally did Global Eagle in was the monsoon that just would not quit.

Now, as Barry (right) prepares to get back into the swing of flying Army helicopters, while presenting his adventures to school kids, he can reflect on what he did get right.

He did make it from Middle Wallop in the England to Guwahati, India. That his travelogue makes one very uninterested in tourism to Guwahati doesn't distract from the accomplishment.

He showed that a gyroplane can be a practical & safe means of travel

He pointed the way to improvements that will need to be made in gyroplanes to increase their value as transportation and utility, not merely sport, aircraft.

He set that overwater record, and possibly some others.

He raised the profile of gyros worldwide.

He, and the Expedition Global Eagle staff, are disbursing remaining funds to charity, just as they'd have done if successful.

And he did it all safely.

All in all, not a bad record of accomplishment. And while he disclaims any designs on further high-profile flight, I suspect that we haven't heard the last of WO2 Barry Jones.

FMI: www.globaleagle.co.uk