Tourism started in Antarctica by the sea in the 1960s. Air overflights started in the 1970s with sightseeing flights by airliners from Australia and New Zealand, and were resumed in the 1990s. The (summer) tour season lasts from November to March. Most of the estimated 14,762 visitors to Antarctica from 19992000 were on sea cruises. During the 2009 to 2010 tourist season, over 37,000 people visited Antarctica.
Landing in Antarctica
Tourism companies are required by the Antarctic Treaty to have a permit to visit Antarctica. Because no country owns Antarctica, countries which have signed the Antarctic Treaty issue permits, rather than visas. For example, an Australian traveling to Antarctica with a tourist company would need to show compliance with the Antarctic Treaty (Environment Protection) Act 1980 by means of an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) approved by the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) of the Department of Agriculture, Water, and the Environment.
Many sea cruises by cruise ships include a landing by RIB (Zodiac) or helicopter. Some land visits may include mountaineering, skiing or even a visit to the South Pole.
Sea cruises
During the 1920s, a Falkland Islands mail ship, the SS Fleurus, made annual trips to the South Shetland Islands and South Orkney Islands to serve whaling and sealing stations there. It carried a small number of commercial passengers, and marketed round-trip "tourist tickets"; these were probably the first commercial tourists to sail to Antarctica.
Modern expedition cruising was pioneered by Lars-Eric Lindblad; in 1969, he launched the MS Lindblad Explorer, a purpose-built liner. Many of the sea cruises leave from Ushuaia in Argentina. Sea cruises generally last anywhere between 10 days and 3 weeks and costs start from around US$6,000 per person for shared accommodation cabins.
There are limited sea cruises to the Ross Sea and East Antarctic (Commonwealth Bay) regions of Antarctica. The New Zealand expedition travel company Heritage Expeditions operates its own ice-strengthened polar research vessel the 'Spirit of Enderby' to these regions several times a year.
Occasionally, very large cruise vessels have visited Antarctica carrying over 950 people. These vessels are usually cruise based and offer no landings. However, in 2009, new regulations were enforced that stopped large vessels from operating in Antarctic waters due to their heavier fuel oils. Ships normally can only land 100 people at a time and those that carry over 500 people are not allowed to land anyone.
Scenic flights
Most scenic flights to Antarctica have been organised from Australia and New Zealand, with airlines from both countries commencing flights in February 1977. The majority of the flights are simple return trips, and in no cases have they landed in Antarctica.
Air New Zealand's first scenic flight took place on 15 February 1977 and was followed by five more that year, then four each in 1978 and 1979. The flights were operated with McDonnell-Douglas DC-10s and departed from Auckland, flying over Ross Island to McMurdo Sound before returning to Auckland with a fuel stop in Christchurch. Later flights flew down the middle of the Sound and over Scott Base rather than over Ross Island as the aircraft could descend to a low altitude to provide better visibility for passengers. Many flights carried experienced Antarctic researchers as guides, including on at least one occasion Sir Edmund Hillary, and lasted roughly 12 hours with approximately four of them over or near the Antarctic mainland. Air New Zealand cancelled and never resumed their Antarctic flying programme in the aftermath of the TE901 disaster, where a route planning error led to the aircraft crashing into Mount Erebus on 28 November 1979 with the loss of all 257 lives aboard.
Qantas operated its first Antarctic flight on 13 February 1977, a charter organised by Sydney entrepreneur Dick Smith. By 1979 twenty-seven flights had carried more than 7,000 passengers. Most used Boeing 747-200Bs and flew from Sydney, Melbourne or Perth on one of two "ice" routes. One went along the coast of George V Land to the French base in Adele Land then back over the South Magnetic Pole. The other went over Oates Land and northern Victoria Land to Cape Washington in the Ross Dependency. In 1977 one flight duplicated Air New Zealand's routing and overflew McMurdo Sound and Mount Erebus. Some shorter flights from Melbourne were also operated by Boeing 707s. Qantas also cancelled its Antarctic programme after the TE901 disaster but eventually resumed it in 1994, and continues to operate charter flights in summer from Sydney, Perth and Melbourne to this day with Boeing 747-400s.