Circumnavigation world record progression

This is a list of the fastest non-orbital circumnavigation made by a person or team.

People or team Total duration (days) Departure date Arrival date Notes Reference
Sebastian Elcano and crew (originally led by Ferdinand Magellan) 1082 20 September 1519 6 September 1522 [1]
Francis Drake and crew 1018 13 December 1577 26 September 1580 [1]
Thomas Cavendish and crew 781 21 July 1586 9 September 1588 [1]
Crew of the Eendracht (originally led by Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire) 748 14 June 1615 1 July 1617 [2]
John Byron and crew 676 2 July 1764 9 May 1766 [3]
George Simpson 605 March 1841 October 1842 [4]
This period is incomplete
George Francis Train "80 days" (excluding a month in France) 1870 1870 By ships and trains, from New York City, perhaps inspiring Jules Verne [5]
Nellie Bly 72 14 November 1889 25 January 1890 Multiple means of transport, inspired by Jules Verne [6]
George Francis Train 67 days, 12 hours, 3 minutes 18 March 1890 24 May 1890 By ships and trains, from Tacoma, Washington [5][7]
George Francis Train 64 days 9 May 1891 12 July 1891 By ships and trains, from Fairhaven, Washington [5]
Andre Jaeger-Schmidt, Henry Frederick, John Henry Mears 36 2 July 1913 6 August 1913 A combination of steamers, yachts, and trains [8]
United States Army Air Service, Lowell H. Smith and Leslie P. Arnold, and Erik H. Nelson and John Harding Jr. 175 calendar days, and covered 26,345 miles (42,398 km) 17 March 1924 28 September 1924 First aerial circumnavigation 363 flying hours 7 minutes; two aircraft of four Douglas World Cruisers complete the mission from Sand Point, Seattle, Washington. [9]:315[10]
John Henry Mears 23 days 15 hours 21 minutes and 3 seconds 1928 1928 [11]
Hugo Eckener 21 days, 5 hours and 31 minutes 8 August 1929 29 August 1929 First circumnavigation in an airship, aboard LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin from Lakehurst, New Jersey [12][13]
Charles Kingsford Smith, Charles Ulm, and crew over 2 years 31 May 1928 June 1930 Southern Cross from Oakland, California [14] [15]
Pilot Wiley Post and navigator Harold Gatty 8 days, 15 hours and 51 minutes 1 July 1931 Lockheed Vega aeroplane, travelled 24,903 kilometres (15,474 mi), did not cross equator [16]
Wiley Post 7 days, 19 hours, 49 minutes 15 July 1933 22 July 1933 Using an autopilot and radio direction finder, did not cross equator. From New York City [16][17]
Howard Hughes, navigator Thomas Thurlow, engineer Richard Stoddard, and mechanic Ed Lund 3 days, 19 hours, 17 minutes [18] 10 July 1938 14 July 1938 Lockheed 14 Super Electra (NX18973) New York City; flight operations manager Albert Lodwick [19]
Captain Ford and Crew one month 2 December 1941 6 January 1942 Pan American World Airways' Pacific Clipper the Boeing 314 Clipper flying boat NC-18609(A) the first commercial plane flight to circumnavigate the world from Treasure Island, San Francisco to LaGuardia Field. [20]
James Gallagher and crew (United States Air Force) 94 hours and 1 minute 1949 1949 B-50 Superfortress Lucky Lady II first aircraft to circle globe non-stop with four in-air refuelings, 37,743 kilometres (23,452 mi), did not cross equator and traveled no further south than the 20-degree parallel. [21]
Col. James Morris[22] and crew (United States Air Force) 45 hours and 19 minutes January 16, 1957 January 18, 1957 Operation Power Flite, three B-52 bombers, led by Lucky Lady III, supported by at least 76 KC-76 refueling aircraft, 39,147 kilometres (24,325 mi), no equatorial crossing [23][24]
David Springbett 44 hours and 6 minutes 8 January 1980 10 January 1980 Retains record for circumnavigation using only scheduled transportation. [24]
Rutan Voyager, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager 9 days, 3 minutes and 44 seconds 14 December 1986 23 December 1986 first aircraft to fly around the world without stopping or refueling from Edwards Air Force Base [25]
Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones 19 days, 21 hours, and 55 minutes 1 March 1999 21 March 1999 Breitling Orbiter 3 first balloon to fly around the world non-stop from Swiss Alpine village of Château-d'Oex [26]
Air France 32 hours 49 minutes and 3 seconds 12 October 1992 13 October 1992 Concorde FAI "Westbound Around the World" and "Eastbound Around the World" world air speed records from Lisbon, Portugal. [27] [28]
Michel Dupont and Claude Hetru (Air France) 31 hours 27 minutes and 49 seconds 15 August 1995 16 August 1995 Concorde with 98 passengers and crew, no equatorial crossing [29]

Other categories
People or team Total duration (days) Departure date Arrival date Notes Reference
Steve Fossett 13 days, 8 hours, 33 minutes 19 June 2002 3 July 2002 Spirit of Freedom balloon, first solo aircraft to fly around the world without stopping or refueling from Northam, Western Australia [30]
Steve Fossett 67 hours, 1 minute, 10 seconds 28 February 2005 3 March 2005 GlobalFlyer first solo nonstop un-refueled fixed-wing aircraft flight around the world from Salina, Kansas [31][32][33]
Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones 5 months 9 March 2015 Five months later Solar Impulse the first round-the-world solar flight in history. [34]

See also

References
  1. Townsend, George Henry; Martin, Frederick W. (1862). The Manual of Dates: a Dictionary of Reference to All the Most Important Events in the History of Mankind to be Found in Authentic Records. p. 217. Retrieved 5 May 2015.
  2. An Historical Account of the Circumnavigation of the Globe: And of the Progress of Discovery in the Pacific Ocean, from the Voyage of Magellan to the Death of Cook. Harper & brothers. 1837. pp. 100.
  3. Australian Joint Copying Project Handbook: Miscellaneous (M series). National Library Australia. 1998. p. 29. ISBN 9780642106964. Retrieved 5 May 2015.
  4. Simpson, Sir George (1847). An overland journey round the world: during the years 1841 and 1842. Lea and Blanchard.
  5. "William Lightfoot Visscher, Journal profile, part one". Skagitriverjournal.com. Retrieved 2013-07-20.
  6. Ruddick, Nicholas. “Nellie Bly, Jules Verne, and the World on the Threshold of the American Age.” Canadian Review of American Studies, Volume 29, Number 1, 1999, p. 8
  7. George Francis Train Sets the Record as the Fastest Person to Travel Round-The-World
  8. The New York Times, "A Run Around the World", August 8, 1913
  9. Thomas, Lowell (1925). The First World Flight. Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.
  10. "First round-the-world flight." National Museum of the United States Air Force, 8 July 2009. Retrieved: 14 July 2017.
  11. Glines, Carroll V. Round-the-world flights, Ch. 2 (3rd ed. 2003) (ISBN 978-1574884487)
  12. Geisenheyer, Max. "Mit 'Graf Zeppelin' Um Die Welt: Ein Bild-Buch". Frankfurter Societäts-Druckerei G.m.b.H., Frankfurt am Mein (Germany), 1929.
  13. "Around the World with the Graf Zeppelin". Modern Mechanics. November 1929. pp. 64–65.
  14. "7.30 report story about Charles Ulm". ABCnet.au. 31 May 1928. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 21 September 2009.
  15. Gallagher, Desmond (1986). Shooting Suns and Things: Transatlantic Fliers at Portmarnock. Kingford Press. ISBN 0951156519.
  16. "Wiley H. Post". First Flight Society. Retrieved: June 23, 2020.
  17. Meunier, Claude. "WILEY POST". Solo flights around the world. October 15, 2007. Retrieved: December 6, 2012.
  18. "A Rich Young Texan with a Poet's Face Gets Hero's Welcome on World Flight." Life , July 25, 1938, pp. 9–11, 14. Retrieved: October 14, 2012.
  19. "Around the World in 91 Hours". Historical Marker Project website. Retrieved July 27, 2016.
  20. Bull, John (August 2014). "The Long Way Round: The Plane that Accidentally Circumnavigated the World". Lapsed Historian. Medium.com. Retrieved April 22, 2018.
  21. Waggoner, Walter H. (March 3, 1949). "First in History; High Officials Greet the Plane as It Ends Hop at Fort Worth". nytimes. Retrieved 23 August 2014.
  22. Morris had co-piloted the Gallagher flight in '49
  23. Airlift Tanker: History of U.S. Airlift and Tanker Forces. Turner Publishing Company. 1995. ISBN 9781563111259.
  24. Bonner, Sara "The fastest man in the atmosphere" in The Times, 12 January 1980, p.3.
  25. "Official FAI database". Archived from the original on 2013-12-24. Retrieved 2012-12-23.
  26. Associated Press, "'Grandiose' Trip Ends: Balloonists tough down in Egyptian desert", March 22, 1999,
  27. Cramoisi, George (2010). Air Crash Investigations: The End of the Concorde Era, the Crash of Air France Flight 4590. Lulu. p. 518. ISBN 978-0-557-84950-5.
  28. "French Concorde to attempt round-the-world record". Anchorage Daily News. 12 October 1992.
  29. "Fastest circumnavigation by passenger aircraft". Guinness World Records. Retrieved 12 May 2019.
  30. National Aviation Hall of Fame
  31. Fossett sets record for longest nonstop flight February 11, 2006
  32. "Fossett sets solo flight record" Archived November 6, 2005, at the Wayback Machine – BBC News article dated March 3, 2005
  33. "Fossett makes history" Archived March 5, 2005, at the Wayback Machine – CNN.com article dated March 4, 2005
  34. First Round-The-World Solar Flight (SolarImpulse.com) Archived 20 January 2015 at the Wayback Machine
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