MERMOZ ROAD 2018 - Epic Aviation Adventure
"La Caravane du Ciel", the "Caravan of the Skies", that's what the Mauritanian Ministery of Transport called us, a group of aviation enthusiasts flying through Africa in ultralight planes. Our given name was the "Mermoz Road", tracking the famous route of the French aviation pioneers, particularly Jean Mermoz (North courier) and Antoine de Saint-Éxupery (South courier) who risked their lives in order to establish the first postal air route from Europe to South America in the early 1920's. We, that is 19 modern ultralight-planes, mostly VL-3 Evolutions, were seduced by the adventure to fly exactly that same route nearly 100 years later. Amazingly, this is still an adventure today. Not only, because we landed on desert strips (among them the original meeting point of North and South courier of the Latécoère line) and flew over great landscapes with virtually no civilization anywhere. But in Africa, general aviation is still somewhat unusual. It takes hours, sometimes months, to successfully file a flight plan. Something that is done within seconds in Europe...
