Two Teams Of Inspirational Pilots Managed To Land Planes In 48 States In Under 48 Hours. Here’s How They Did It (Updated)

In May, a pair of pilots from Chicagoland departed from an airport in Maine, raced down the eastern seaboard, and landed in every state before rounding the contiguous United States. The pilots finished their tour by touching down in Indiana in their Cirrus SR22T. Then, earlier this month, a set of pilots from Delta Air Lines departed Michigan in a Piper PA-32R Saratoga, doing their own mission to land in an airport in every state, finishing by landing in Maine. Both teams managed to land in all 48 contiguous states in under 48 hours, smashing the previous record of 16 days. Here’s how these four inspirational pilots managed to do what sounds like a slog of flying.

Last month, Bob Reynolds of Barrington, Illinois and John Skittone of Gurnee, Illinois, hopped into a Cirrus SR22 Turbo, flew it to Maine, then began their race around the country. When all was said and done, the pilots touched their wheels down in all 48 states and they did it in just 38 hours and 13 minutes. Earlier this month, Delta Airlines Airbus A350 Capt. Barry Behnfeldt joined forces with Delta A321 Capt. Aaron Wilson to do the same race. This team started in Michigan and finished their mission in Maine, doing it in just 44 hours and 7 minutes. Both teams did their flights slightly differently and both sought a Guinness World Record for their achievement, but one ultimately took the crown.

For context, the current record is 16 days, 12 hours, and 56 minutes. That record was set by Calvin Page and Mitch Miller in May 2018. So, no matter how these four pilots stand, they absolutely annihilated the standing record.

48 States In 44 Hours

Let’s start with the story about the Delta pilots. These guys have seemingly gotten most of the media attention and the vast majority of the pictures here will be about their extremely well-documented flight. They’ve even gotten a blessing from their employer.

According to Delta Air Lines, A350 Capt. Barry Behnfeldt and Delta A321 Capt. Aaron Wilson were inspired by a 2021 record attempt by a fellow Delta pilot. Both Behnfeldt and Wilson are alumni of Bowling Green State University School of Aviation. One day, Behnfeldt met up with Wilson for coffee, when he pitched the idea of setting an ambitious record of flying to 48 states in 48 hours. Wilson was excited about the idea, from Delta Air Lines:

“He gave me his presentation, and it took me a second to realize he was asking me to go with him,” Aaron said. “But I was super excited about it. The mission was right up my alley, so I said yes right away.”

The plane chosen for the record attempt was a six-seat 1980 PA-32R Piper Saratoga.

As AVweb writes, in the early 1970s, Piper Aircraft’s popular plane was the Commanche. In 1972, the aircraft builder’s factory was destroyed in a flood, taking the tooling for the Commanche with it. Instead of picking up the pieces and restarting Commanche production, Piper decided to develop an aircraft based on its PA-32 Cherokee Six. Piper’s changes were mild and included adding a retractable undercarriage and a modified wing spar, which boosted gross weight 200 pounds to 3,600 pounds. The new aircraft was christened the Piper PA-32R Lance and introduced in 1975.

The Saratoga variant made its first appearance in 1980, and the biggest difference between it and a Lance is its tapered wing. Behnfeldt’s and Wilson’s 1980 PA-32R Piper Saratoga.

Power comes from a Lycoming IO-540-K1G5D flat-six making 300 HP. It’s an aircraft with a cruise speed of 158 knots and with a range about 800 nautical miles.

The guys picked up a third member for their team, Thomas Twiddy, who served in the Navy with Behnfeldt and owns a certified FAA 145 repair station. Twiddy would be the team’s in-flight technician.

Preparing For A 48-State Speedrun

Delta writes that after assembling the team, the next step was planning a route. As the challenge suggests, the men would need to depart and then hit the rest of the 47 states in pretty much every hour. That means choosing a route optimized for getting across a state as quickly as possible.

But it’s also not as simple as drawing a giant circle around the country with a bunch of different stops. According to the rules for the record attempt, the team had to make sure a witness was at every airport to sign off as proof that the plane actually touched down. This would prove difficult for the stops to take place late at night. Speaking of night, the timing was also incredibly important. Behnfeldt and Wilson would by flying by Visual Flight Rules for as much of the challenge as possible. However, when it came to flying in the mountains around America, they specifically timed their flights to cover those by day.

As a result, here’s what the “48N48” team’s flight path looked like:

I like the optimization at work here. The 48N48 team dotted airports on the eastern seaboard and just barely grazed Florida. It’s even pretty clever how they came inland to hit the corners of states like Tennessee while still heading northbound. Looking at the image there, many of the states, like California and North Dakota, were touched just to add to the total, which is neat to see.

In addition to hitting 48 states as fast as possible, here are the rules the 48N48 team says they had to work with:

Cannonball Run In The Sky

On June 4 at 22:29, Behnfeldt, Twiddy, and Wilson began their journey by hopping into the Piper, destined for the start destination airport in Berrien Springs, Michigan. Their departure was met with an outpouring of support from friends, family, and fans. The guys even got a fly-by formation featuring a T34 as they flew into the night.

Part of landing and taking off in the contiguous United States so fast comes down to the team’s plan. In every stop that wasn’t a fuel stop, the team would land, leave the engine running, get the necessary signatures, then back into the sky they went. Meanwhile, back at home base at Henry County Airport, other pilots assisted the crew by checking the weather and making sure someone would be at destination airports along the way.

As the 48N48 team flew around the country, they were cheered on by people who heard about the record attempt. When they landed at Wayne Municipal Airport in Nevada at about 20 hours in, the number 48 was illuminated on the side of a hangar. Behnfeldt said stuff like that kept them invigorated.

Among the 48N48 team’s goals were to promote general aviation, promote the Bowling Green State University School of Aviation, and make a donation to the Veteran’s Airlift Command (VAC), a service providing private air transportation to America’s combat-injured veterans for medical or other compassionate purposes through a national network of volunteer aircraft owners and pilots. But that wasn’t all, as 48N48 wanted to inspire a new generation of pilots.

The team got a chance to help do this about 30 hours in when they landed at Coffeyville, Kansas. The crew was informed that there would be people waiting for them when they landed. They expected maybe 10 people, but found themselves in a crowd of nearly 50, including several kids. This stop was turned into a refueling halt as Behnfeldt and his crew spread the love of flying, from Delta:

Barry grew up with a passion for aviation, citing his father as the person who initially ignited that love in him. He started working at Henry County Airport at 17, and, after putting in 2,000 hours of flying there, he moved on to the Navy for 30 years, flying F-18s for 17 of those years. He’s now been at Delta for 24 years.

“I want to lighten the spark in someone who’s not a pilot yet the same way my dad did for me,” Barry said. “To look in the eyes of the little kids in Coffeyville and see that there’s potential for a future pilot was such a cool thing.”

Continuing their journey, the 48N48 team was given lunch by Walt Fricke, founder and president of the Veterans Airlift Command. Team 48N48 even made a stop at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Delta’s hub, to meet with their extended Delta Air Lines family.

Finally, after 47 stops and 44 hours, 7 minutes, the crew landed at Portland International Jetport and taxied their plane into the record books. On their way home to Henry County Airport, the team spelled 48N48 in the sky. Along the way, the 48N48 nonprofit raised $30,048 for the VAC.

48 States In 38 Hours

While the 48N48 team is pretty well known and reported all over aviation news, less known is the team that completed the same challenge in May, but six hours faster. Bob Reynolds of Barrington, Illinois, and John Skittone of Gurnee, Illinois claim to have landed in 48 states in just 38 hours and 13 minutes. Which, if verified, would mean they took the speed crown before the Delta team even went wheels up.

Update: the time has been verified and the Illinois pilots took the record! Read the end for a statement from Skittone.

Reynolds and Skittone hopped into a Cirrus SR22T in May then took off into the skies for their own record run. Amazingly, this story was covered in depth only by the Chicago Tribune.

According to the Chicago Tribune, as a kid, Skittone wanted to be an astronaut and watched planes land at Palwaukee Municipal Airport, now known as Chicago Executive Airport. Skittone took his first flight at 21 after learning that it wasn’t as expensive as he expected. Reynolds was a young man when he fell in love with flying after hailing a small plane to fly him across Lake Michigan. It would take him until 46 years old to afford a pilot license. Today, Skittone is a financial advisor and Reynolds owns an IT business. A fellow pilot suggested the two fly together and it turned into a fantastic friendship.

The pair sound like characters from a Top Gun movie in how they compliment each other. Reynolds says Skittone flies “like a poet” while Skittone says Reynolds is an “airport collector.” Apparently, they hype each other up, which is so awesome.

When COVID-19 hit, commercial air travel slowed to a crawl. This meant that normally bustling international airports, a terrible place for two guys and a SR22, became empty enough to land at. Thus, the two started “collecting” airports like O’Hare International Airport, Los Angeles International, the three major New York airports and over 30 more hubs.

This brought on another idea. Skittone had long dreamed of flying to all states in the contiguous 48 in one go. Inspired by a friend that set her own record, the pilot friends decided to make it a reality.

The aircraft used for this attempt was a Cirrus SR22T.

Introduced in 2001, the Cirrus SR22 has been the world’s best-selling single-engine aircraft since 2004. It’s easy to see why this is such a popular aircraft. The SR22 features an all-composite construction and comes standard with the Cirrus Airframe Parachute System, which you can read more about by clicking here.

Power comes from a Continental TSIO-550-K Turbocharged flat-six making 315 HP. It’s an aircraft with a max cruise speed of 213 knots and with a range about 1,021 nautical miles.

While Reynolds and Skittone don’t have a website or an airline documenting their journey, the Chicago Tribune describes the kind of work that goes into planning something like this.

They sought to minimize time heading into headwinds and maximize time flying with tail winds. The refining process led to 14 versions of their route charted in dozens of hours over several months.

The path they settled on started in Maine, worked down the East Coast, shot across the South, then up the West Coast and finally brought them back across the West and Midwest before a final touchdown in Indiana. The pilots also had to line up witnesses to verify every landing and stocked the plane with snacks and flares. They even mapped out where to fill gas and go to the restroom.

If you were wondering how it’s like to try to hit 48 states so quickly, it sometimes means hitting many airports in just a short amount of time. When flying down the northeastern portion of the country, Reynolds and Skittone had to hit 11 airports in just 3.5 hours.

In describing the trip, the men was most amazed by watching America transform through their windows, from the Chicago Tribune:

Watching America’s shifting textures blend together was the trip’s highlight, the pilots agreed. The rolling hills and valleys of New England turned into the Smoky Mountains. The snow-capped Rocky Mountains sat among wide-open plains and reddish lunar landscapes, Reynolds said.

“It’s really hard to appreciate unless you see it from the air,” Skittone said.

The pilots encountered their own challenges, such as airports without any lighting at all and in one case smoke from wildfires obscuring their view during one landing. Most of the airports chosen for this trip were tiny and one even apparently looked like a “bowling alley gutter.”

When the pilot friends touched down in Indiana, they managed to hit 48 states in just 38 hours and 13 minutes. Not only do they have the witnesses to prove it, but video footage, flight logs, and GPS data.

What’s Next

The situation for both pilot teams was in the hands of the people at Guinness World Records. Apparently, the review process takes 12 to 15 weeks, then they’ll hear who gets the new record. In this case, the Chicagoland team beat the Delta team.

Regardless of the winner, what these pilots achieved was fascinating. Certainly, planning alone for a trip like this is enough to make someone go mad. Then there are things outside of your control, like the weather or potential mechanical failures. Though, something I didn’t expect was the fuel cost. Reynolds and Skittone apparently paid $4,000 in fuel for their trip, which was less than what I would have guessed.

Update: John Skittone reached out to me with some great news, as well as with some additional context:

“Bob and I haven’t been seeking extensive media coverage, but a few outlets have approached us (Chicago Tribune, WGN-TV, NBC in Milwaukee, etc…). Chicago Tribune did extensive fact checking for their article on us, seeking GPS logs, video evidence, logbooks, and Guinness statements. 

The other team is fully aware that we set the record at a time 6 hours faster than theirs, and yet they continue to represent their flight as a record breaking flight. I appreciate your thorough coverage of the flights, but you might want to clarify that the record had already been certified for the Cirrus, and the Piper team failed in their attempt to beat our time.”

Either way, these guys made their dreams happen, even if said dreams might be somewhat silly. I suppose this was not much different than seeing how fast you could drive across the country, though, much more legal. To me, this is pretty inspirational. If you have a dream, shoot for it. Maybe, one day I’ll be writing about something fun you did.

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