Round-The-World Flight To Raise Money For Historic Lear Jet

WICHITA—Bart Gray, founder of Global Jetcare, an air ambulance provider in Brooksville, Florida, plans to commemorate the 100^th anniversary of an historic around-the-world flight in a unique way—by recreating the journey.

Gray plans to complete the flight in a Learjet 36A, one of six Learjets in Global Jetcare’s fleet. The flight will also act as a fundraiser to help restore a historic Lear Jet Model 23, Serial 23-003. The Lear Jet 23, owned by Wichita-based Classic Lear Jet Foundation, was the third of its kind to be manufactured and the first Lear Jet to be delivered to a customer. It was built in 1964.

Global Jetcare has been involved in the Classic Lear Jet Foundation’s efforts. The company provided most of the labor needed to prepare the aircraft for travel before loading it onto trucks for the journey from Bartow Executive Airport in Florida, where it had been sitting, to Wichita, where it was built. Here, volunteers, most of them current, retired or former Learjet employees, plan to restore it. It arrived in February 2023.

Gray was inspired to make the trip after reading a book by author Lowell Thomas describing the Army Air Service’s first successful around-the-world flight. In the early 1920s, several countries were competing to be first. British and French teams tried unsuccessfully. The Italians, Portuguese and British also made plans. In 1923, the U.S. Army Air Service assigned a group of officers to the project. Using four Douglas World Cruisers, modified Douglas DT-2 torpedo bombers, pilots took off April 6, 1924, from Seattle and flew westward. Two aircraft finished the flight, flying 26,345 mi. in more than 363 flight hr. over 175 calendar days.

Commemorating the journey, Gray, along with three other pilots and an observer, plan to leave from the Bombardier Learjet facility in Wichita on April 4, 2024, take off westbound for the journey and land back in Wichita on April 6—100 years to the day the original flight departed. The pilots are planning stops in Salinas, California; Kailua, Hawaii; the Marshall Islands, the Republic of Palau, Thailand, Pakistan, Egypt, Italy, Portugal and Canada. The goal is to limit all ground stops to 30 min., which means the crew must work coordinated and quickly, Gray says.

The trip is expected to take 54 hr. from start to finish, or about 48 flight hr., he says. Gray will take the lead as captain of the flight.

The Learjet 36A will be modified with a bed so two pilots can sleep while the other two fly. Besides Gray, two of the pilots on board also fly for Global Jetcare. The fourth pilot will be John Bone, who in 2017 completed a solo circumnavigation of the globe in a Cirrus SR22, covering 21,078 km. with 19 stops.

“I’m just excited to be doing it,” Gray says. “I have flown this airplane almost everywhere in the world. I’m very familiar with it. But I’ve never done a flight like this.”

The biggest challenge will be “keeping the airplane going,” he says, and dealing with any inflight maintenance or ground-stop issues along with flight planning and staying on schedule.

Those wanting to donate to the Lear Jet 23 restoration project or to help sponsor the flight should go to https://classiclear.org/, organizers say.