Entrepreneur from Salzburg becomes number 1 in collecting from airports worldwide
Salzburg Railway Transport Logistics GmbH
Salzburg/Venice (ots)
International competition before change of leadership: Victory flight on Saturday from Portoroz to Venice-Nicelli
Salzburg/Venice. The Salzburg railway transport and logistics entrepreneur Gunther Pitterka (54) is on the verge of becoming world champion in “collecting” from airports. The owner of the SETG company, with around 200, is part of an international collectors’ community of aviation enthusiasts whose goal is to fly to as many airports worldwide as possible and to document this in a competitive manner. The documentation and verification platform is the website www.flugstatistics.de. According to this stats site, the current peak number of participants at all airports served worldwide is 1581. Salzburg’s Gunther Pitterka, currently number 2 in the collector rankings for airport collecting, will make himself number 1 worldwide and current number 1 with a flight Saturday this week ousted from their top spot. Pitterka also becomes a world record holder and has flown to 1582 different airfields.
The world champion flight will take place next Saturday, November 19, 2022. The flight with a 14-seater plane (LET 410) goes from Portoroz Airport in Istria (departure 12:15) to Aeroporto Nicelli in Venice-Lido, the historic airport of Venice (Via R. Morandini, 9. 30126 Venezia VE), the still has a grass runway. And from where in the 1930s even scheduled flights to Austria started. There are numerous fans of the new world champion on board.
Pitterka has been involved in this curious but ambitious competition since 1995, with a passion for aviation and global travel in general. His original motive for trying it: Overcoming a pronounced fear of flying.
In an attempt to fly to as many airports as possible, Pitterka has flown 2,928,010 kilometers in recent years. He was in the air for 5409.10 hours, has orbited the earth arithmetically 73.06 times and has also lied to the moon 7.617 times purely arithmetically. Among other things, Pitterka flew to Everest Base Camp and landed on the Caribbean island of Saba (shortest airport) and at Bar Yehuda Airport (lowest airport in the world/minus 386 meters).
Most of his flights to the airport from airports worldwide departed from Salzburg (1063), his home airport. In his weekly airport rankings, Pitterka was on the road with 566 different types of aircraft and flew with 743 different airlines. On his worldwide travels, Pitterka has landed or started in 189 countries.
There were also numerous curiosities on the many flights. For reasons of secrecy, the sun visors had to be lowered when approaching Pyongyang/North Korea, whereas they had to be raised when landing anywhere in the world. Pitterka experienced a flight cancellation at Mount Kenya Airport because a warthog family crossed the airfield shortly before landing. Pitterka’s attempt to reach the westernmost Shetland island of Foula required 10 one-way attempts. Eight had to be aborted due to weather conditions, one due to a gull in the engine and only one outbound attempt was successful.
Press contact:
Gunther Pitterka
Mobile: +43 664 44 53 465
Email: [email protected]
For details see also: www.flugstatistics.de
further information: 0043 664 44 33 835 (spokesman)
Original content from: Salzburger Eisenbahn Transport Logistik GmbH, transmitted by news aktuell