Behind the numbers

Andrei and Keith spent almost every day on a different airport, and often in a different city, for 2 and a half months.

In fact, they stayed in over 50 hotel, motel, or private residence rooms in 75 days.

They only spent 2 to 3 days in each country, so they had to deal with customs formalities and different flight regulations every 2-3 days.

And not only was each stop short, but each involved 14-21 hours flying or preparing flights (see below).

Behind the numbers

That is 2 flights and 8 hours flying or preparing flights each and every day for 75 days. In the end, Andrei and Keith were not sure if they spent more time in the plane than in a hotel room.

During the mission, they spent over 600 hours flying or preparing for flights, conservatively assuming 1 hour of pre- and post- flight, and only 1.5 hours for flight planning per flight.

In reality, many flights took many hours to plan. Besides dealing with different regulations in each country, and sometimes extreme bureaucracy, Andrei and Keith spent considerable time finding the most cost-effective ways to fly, locating airports with the cheapest aviation fuel and optimizing routes.

And the time they spent effectively flying represents about 4-5 times what the average private pilot and small plane fly in one entire year, all compressed in two and a half months.

Behind the numbers

Participating in events with the local MS communities and the media was the main goal of the mission. This included not only flying people with MS, but also visiting MS centers and learning what the issues are in each country.

Also, each week during the 10 week journey, Andrei and Keith had 2-3 TV interviews and flew 5 journalists along with people with MS, while meeting others off airports.

Coordinating MS communities and media outlets in 30 countries over 75 days was an extremely difficult process that was only possible with the support of the rest of the Fly for MS team, who dedicated hundreds of hours, not included here.