If you are deciding when to go to Antarctica, November carries something the rest of the season does not. It is the month of the first powered flight in the Antarctic, and from November 2027 it is the month Antarctic aviation enters its hundredth year.
Twenty Minutes That Changed Antarctic Exploration
On November 16, 1928, a single-engine Lockheed Vega 1 lifted off a rough airstrip on Deception Island, in the South Shetlands. Aboard were Sir Hubert Wilkins, the Australian explorer and photographer, and Carl Ben Eielson, the American pilot who had flown with him across the Arctic earlier that year. The flight lasted twenty minutes and carried them in a circuit around the island.1
It was the first flight by powered aircraft anywhere in the Antarctic region.2 The pair kept flying through the following months, often in punishing weather. On December 20 they made the long one, more than 600 miles to the base of the Antarctic Peninsula.1 Country that would have taken a sledging party months to cross passed beneath them in a single day.
What changed was not just speed. It was the ability to see the shape of a place while standing outside it, and to bring back a record of it. Aerial survey would become essential to mapping the continent.
What Late November Brings to the Peninsula
Late November sits at the hinge of the Antarctic season, where spring gives way to summer. Penguins return to their colonies to court and nest. Seals haul out on the floes. Seabirds work the air above glaciers still heavy with the season’s snow.
Daylight stretches long enough that a day ashore is not rationed by the light, and whales may be seen offshore as they return to feed, though numbers build later in the season.
The ice is still doing what the winter left it doing. Fast ice breaks up through the month, which changes what is reachable week to week, so a late November itinerary rarely resembles one sailing three weeks later. Channels that are open in January may still be shut. The expedition team plans around that rather than against it, and the result is a route shaped by conditions instead of a brochure.
Ashore, the snow is unmarked. Later in the season, the landing sites show the traffic of a summer, with paths worn between colonies and ground bared by melt. Arrive in late November, and you are often walking on surfaces that have seen very little since the previous season ended. That is its own argument for coming early rather than late.
Two Ways to Reach the Peninsula
You can cross the Drake Passage by sea and arrive the way the early explorers did, watching the water change as you go. Or you can follow Wilkins and fly. Atlas runs Fly the Drake Expeditions in two formats.
The Drake Express Expedition is a seven-night round trip from King George Island with private charter flights in both directions, bypassing the crossing entirely. The Drake Fly & Sail Expedition sails the passage one way and returns by charter flight. Flying between Punta Arenas, Chile, and King George Island takes roughly two hours, against about two days at sea each way. Both include the charter flights, a night in Punta Arenas before and after, and six full days exploring the Antarctic Peninsula.3
The choice is not only about time. The Drake has a reputation it has earned, and for some guests skipping it is the difference between going and not going. For others, the crossing is the point: two days of open water and seabirds that make the first sight of ice mean something. Both formats exist because both answers are reasonable.
For the hundredth year specifically, two November 2027 departures fall after the anniversary date: Drake Fly & Sail on November 19 and Drake Express on November 28.3
Closer Than the Air Allows
Wilkins saw Antarctica from above, at speed, through a cockpit window. You will see it at eye level and at walking pace: by Zodiac among the ice, ashore near penguin colonies, alongside an expedition team of up to 17 guides, naturalists and scientists who know the region well.
The gap between those two ways of seeing is most of the argument for going. From the air, Antarctica reads as pattern, all coastline and ice and shadow. At sea level it stops being a pattern. It becomes weather on your face, the noise a colony makes before you can see it, the particular blue inside a piece of ice that rolled over sometime last week. Wilkins brought back the shape of the place. What a photograph could not carry was the scale of it standing next to you.
Landing sites are chosen day by day, because ice and weather decide what is possible rather than a printed plan. A possible landing at a site like Deception Island, conditions permitting, is the kind of thing the team assesses each morning. Aboard an all-suite yacht carrying fewer than 200 guests, the group going ashore stays small enough that the day belongs to you rather than to a queue.3
See the Century From Sea Level
A century after a twenty-minute flight redrew what people thought Antarctica was, there is still more of it to see. Explore Atlas’ Antarctica cruises and polar expeditions, or read how the line approaches the region under Conscious Navigation.
Contact us to start planning a luxury Antarctica cruise.
Frequently Asked Questions
When is the best time of year to go to Antarctica?
The Antarctic season runs from roughly November to March, and each stretch of it offers something different. November and early December bring deep snow cover, courting and nesting penguins, and lengthening daylight. Midsummer brings hatching chicks. Late season, in February and March, brings the most whale activity and thinner snow ashore. If wildlife courtship and clean snow appeal to you, arrive early.
What happened on November 16, 1928?
Sir Hubert Wilkins and pilot Carl Ben Eielson made the first powered flight in the Antarctic region, taking off from a rough airstrip on Deception Island in a Lockheed Vega 1 and flying a twenty-minute circuit around the island.1 They went on to make a far longer exploratory flight down the Antarctic Peninsula on December 20 that year.2
What does the 100th year of Antarctic aviation mean?
The first year of Antarctic aviation ran from November 1928 to November 1929. Counting forward, the hundredth year opens on November 16, 2027 and closes on November 16, 2028. Cruises departing after mid-November 2027 sail within it.
Can I fly to Antarctica instead of crossing the Drake Passage?
Yes. Atlas offers two fly-cruise formats. One flies both directions between Punta Arenas and King George Island, and one sails the Drake Passage once and flies home. The flight takes about two hours rather than two days at sea, and both formats include the same six full days exploring the peninsula.3
Will I get to land on Deception Island?
Landings are never guaranteed anywhere on the Antarctic Peninsula. Ice, wind, and sea conditions decide each day’s plan, and the expedition team selects sites accordingly. Deception Island is where the 1928 flight began, but like any Antarctic site, it can only ever be a possibility rather than a promise.
References
1. “Celebrating 90 years of Antarctic aviation,” Australian Antarctic Program, November 16, 2018, https://www.antarctica.gov.au/news/2018/celebrating-90-years-of-antarctic-aviation/.
2. “Wilkins, George Hubert,” Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, accessed September 30, 2026, https://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/museum/shackleton/biographies/Wilkins,_George_Hubert/.
3. Atlas Ocean Voyages, “Atlas Ocean Voyages Expands Fly-Cruise Antarctica