23.06.2022 // On 5 June, the World Environment Day, an air expedition 'From the White Sea to the Black Sea' was launched. Four vehicles flew from Arkhangelsk to cover over 3,000 km to Novorossiysk. During the longest transcontinental flight on paramotors, the crew of Fyodor Konyukhov twice set a world record, in two times beating the current result.

Fyodor Konyukhov, the legendary traveller, Ambassador of the Clean Arctic project together with Igor Potapkin, Master of Sport of International Class and Vice-President of the Russian Paragliding Federation, went on an expedition 'From the White Sea to the Black Sea' on a twin-paramotor.

Having completed the first stage of the expedition, on 9 June, Konyukhov and Potapkin set a record for the distance of a non-stop flight on a paramotor. Russian airship pilots have covered more than 631.2 km in 7 hours and 52 minutes from Vologda to the village of Miloslavskoye in the Ryazan Region.

Having set the first record, in just 8 days, the crew surpassed their own result almost twice — 1,040 km of non-stop flight. On 17 June, Konyukhov and Potapkin took off from the city of Uman in the Lipetsk Region and after 13 hours and 17 minutes landed in the village of Baklazan in Chechnya.

In Grozny, Konyukhov was forced to leave the project and return to Moscow due to family circumstances. The remaining crews continued the transcontinental flight.

The expedition 'From the White Sea to the Black Sea' is one of the stages of preparation for the first-ever conquest of the North Pole on a paramotor. A training flight of 3,000 km over land in temperate latitudes is an opportunity to take into account all the nuances and prepare the vehicle for testing in the harsh conditions of the Arctic.

A non-stop flight at high latitudes will be another record of Russian airship pilots.

The start of the expedition is scheduled for 1 August 2022. 'There will be water and ice and hummocks beneath us. Lots of things. Accordingly, we need to stay alive. There are two options — to go down in history and to get in trouble. Our option is with history,' Potapkin said.

By their extreme flight, Konyukhov and Potapkin are going to support the Clean Arctic federal project — so-called general cleanup in high latitudes, which will free nature from the garbage, accumulated over decades of Polar exploration.

'The mesmerising, mysterious and alluring beauty of the Arctic keeps me coming back here again and again. It's nice to know that thanks to thousands of people who cared about the project, I will be able to see from a bird's eye view how the Arctic is being transformed and its pristine purity returns!' admits Fyodor Konyukhov.