Trans-Polar Aviation and Jurisdiction over Arctic Airspace

Current press articles and periodical literature, both in the United States and abroad, are manifesting a developing interest in trans-polar aviation and Arctic aërial jurisdiction. Although this interest in Arctic airspace appears to be conceived in the exigencies of the present world conflict, belief in the practicability of air routes traversing the Arctic Basin and joining the great centers of civilization of the two hemispheres was expressed as long ago as shortly after the First World War. Perhaps most vocal of the exponents is the polar explorer and publicist Vilhjalmur Stefansson, who began to stress the positional significance of the Arctic almost twenty years ago.Meanwhile the feasibility of polar aviation was demonstrated in actual practice. Following a series of experimental flights by dirigible and plane—and once the urge to attain the North Pole via the air materialized in the successful flights of Richard E. Byrd, Roald Amundsen-Lincoln Ellsworth, and Umberto Nobile in 1926 and 1928—polar flying concentrated largely upon the spanning of the Atlantic and Pacific aërial highways between the two hemispheres.