The legendary Breitling DC-3 airplane landed in Qatar last week as part of its record-breaking world tour.
Breitling DC-3 over Doha / Facebook.com/BreitlingDC3WorldTour
The historic Douglas DC-3 (now Breitling DC-3) airplane arrived in Doha on Sunday as part of its campaign to become the oldest plant to circumnavigate across the planet. The Breitling DC-3 will make its next stop in Dubai, before continuing to several stops around the world on its way back Geneva.
The plane was given special privilege to fly low over Doha after having crossed over the Gulf from Bahrain. Flying in at just 2,000 feet, it flew lower than any commercial aircraft is allowed to, something pilot Francisco Agullo described as a “unique experience and a personal highlight of this world tour”.
The Breitling DC-3 World Tour lifted off on March 9, 2017, marking the 77th anniversary for the plane’s maiden flight.
Starting off in Breitling’s home country of Switzerland, the plane will visit a total of 54 countries over the next seven months before heading back to Switzerland, and landing at the Breitling Sion Airshow 2017 in September.
The plane’s crew are not flying alone. To celebrate the world tour, they are carrying along a set of 500 limited edition pieces of Breitling’s famous Navitimer aviation chronograph. 25 of these will be made available for Middle Eastern timepiece and aviation enthusiasts.
Nicknamed the “Normandy landings plane”, the Douglas DC-3 HB-IRJ was first delivered to American Airlines in 1940 and first used by the American military between 1942 and 1944. It later became a very popular commercial airplane with more 16,000 units produced.
Today there are fewer than 150 DC-3 aircrafts around the world that could still lift off, one of them being the one that flew first in 1940.
