12/14/2020
📚🔍"Aside from being the world's most-produced aircraft at 43,000+ built and counting, the humble 172 has its place in aviation history as a record breaker...
On December 4th, 1958, Bob Timm and John Cook took off from McCarran Field in Las Vegas, Nevada in a modified Cessna 172 emblazoned with the name of the Hacienda Hotel where Timm, a World War II veteran bomber pilot, worked as a slot machine mechanic...the owner of the hotel had agreed to sponsor the flight and had the idea of making it a cancer research fundraiser as well to give the record attempt a more altruistic justification than being purely a PR stunt. For the next two months, the two pilots flew around Nevada and southern California, refuelling and taking on supplies from a speeding pickup truck along an abandoned stretch of highway and sleeping in turns on a mattress that had been installed in place of the starboard and rear seats. They landed safely back at McCarran on February 7th, 1959, after 64 days, 22 hours and 19 minutes aloft, a total of 1,558.3 hours of air time. After breaking the existing record, Timm and Cook had decided to continue their flight as long as possible, but eventually had to discontinue it because their engine was wearing out and it was becoming difficult to climb away after taking on fuel. There are plenty of write-ups of the record flight online, two of the most detailed are on the AOPA website and at Disciples of Flight. Hacienda was later sold to at least two subsequent owners in Canada and had a long flying career before eventually being preserved and restored to its record-breaking configuration and is now on display suspended above one of the baggage claim carousels at McCarran International Airport." ✈️ 😎
