On December 12th, a passenger jet made history by landing on a new "blue ice" runway, in Australia's Antarctic territory. The runway is two and a half miles long, 700 meters thick and moves about 12 meters southwest annually due to the natural movement of the glaciers.

The Boeing A319, one of Boeing's smaller planes was chosen, because it can make a return flight without needing to refuel.  Prior to this the only planes that have been able to fly into the Antarctica are military planes.

Work on the runway which cost $10million Australian Dollars, began in 2005. However, due to the harsh weather conditions, construction workers could only work in the summers, and it took them three years to complete the job. Even then, they had to face below freezing temperatures (-35) and cold winds blowing at 100 knots an hour.

While the idea of flying passenger planes to the Antarctic region has been considered since the 1950's, it was not seriously looked into until 2001, when a feasibility (to see if it was possible) study was done. Then in 2005, the Australian Government funded the project with $46 million Australian Dollars and the work began.

The first flight carried only operational personnel (people who work in the plane). Once approved by aviation authorities, there will be regular flights from Australia, but for specialists and scientists only. This will help cut their travel time to the area from ten days (by boat) to just four hours. There are no plans to open this service for tourism.

The runway has been constructed nineteen miles from the nearest wildlife population area and is expected to have a minimal or no impact on the wildlife and the environment, which is a great relief to environmentalists.

Sources: liveleak.com, abcnet.au