Antonovs over the Arctic : Flying to the North Pole in Russian Biplanes

In the spring of 1928, two men in a single-engine plane took off from the northernmost point in America - Barrow, Alaska. Flying for over 20 hours across the Arctic, they completed a journery to Spitsbergen, Norway, described by their contemporaries Byrd and Amundsen as ' the most remarkable journey yet made.'

Seventy years later a team of six explorers set out in a pair of 1947 design biplanes, the Antonov An-2, to recreate that historic journey.

The story takes us beyond the challenges of the North to explore remote islands in Canad's Northwest Territory, Greenland and Norway, where polar bears, musk oxen and wolves roam freely. The men, from Shane Lundgren, who is the youngest person to qualify as a 737 jet pilot, to Ron Sheardown, a bush pilot who has spent thousands of hours flying in the high Arctic, take us along on an adventourous journey over the top of the world.