Meet the Cathay Pacific pilot who trekked across Greenland for environmental awareness – and returned home to find the coronavirus pandemic raging

You might think that a senior pilot for one of the world’s leading airlines would have seen and done most things, but Cathay Pacific senior first pilot Katrine Friis Olsen jumped at it when offered the chance to see a remote corner of the world and do some good at the same time.

Joining a crew of women setting off on the Arctic Circle Trail in an effort to raise money and awareness for underprivileged women affected by climate change in Asia, Olsen boarded the plane for the adventure of her lifetime.

The trip involved traversing the Arctic Circle on fat-tyre bikes over icy tips and frozen lakes, and then a final 200km ride from the Russell Glacier across to the west coast of what is the world’s biggest island, Greenland.

“Working in the airline industry, I have certainly had opportunities to travel solo for many years to the outskirts of civilisation,” Olsen recalls. “The excitement had somewhat faded and I lost some of the drive to explore. A purpose was missing. And so the world’s increasing ecological and sociological problems, which I’ve always been aware of and interested in, became my saviour.”

This is not Olsen’s first fundraising expedition. Olsen set out with an all-women team to Western Mongolia in 2018. The 2020 expedition once again took her to extreme conditions, though for a different cause.

Olsen, along with nine other women, went to Greenland under the banner of a self-funded HER Planet Earth team led by founder Christine Amour-Levar.

“Climate change does impact women and children disproportionately in many countries, such as Bangladesh, where up to 17 million people are expected to be relocated because of rising sea levels caused by ice melts,” she added. “As Vidar Helgesen, Norwegian Minister of Climate and Environment, once noted: ‘What happens in the Arctic, does not stay in the Arctic’.”