N.J. Pilot, 86, Gearing Up to Fly Around the World for a 4th Time

Ed Galkin traces his fascination with aviation to watching planes taking off and landing in Newark as a young boy.

“I always wanted to fly. Always,” said Galkin, 86, of Edison.

Now, he’s getting ready for his fourth, and likely final, flight around the world starting Sunday, with a co-captain 22 years younger joining him at the controls.

“This probably will be my last circumnavigation,” said Galkin, who was joined by other co-pilots for his three prior journeys around the Earth in 1988, 2004 and 2018.

There is a poignant undertone to their journey. As he did in 2018, Galkin is using his worldwide effort — dubbed Flight for the Cure — as a fundraiser for the Alzheimer’s Association.

His brother, Samuel, had the progressive brain disease when he died at age 83 six years ago.

“When he passed away, he didn’t know his name. He didn’t know what he did. It was a sad ending for a nice guy,” Galkin said.

Galkin, a retired dentist, is a father of two, grandfather of five and great-grandfather of four. He and his wife, Bobbie, have been married for 62 years.

Sometime after 8:30 a.m. Sunday, if all goes according to plan, Galkin will wave goodbye to his family after boarding the plane he’s owned since 1977 at Central Jersey Regional Airport in Hillsborough. Then, Galkin and his longtime friend and co-pilot, Zvi Mosery, will lift off on a nearly seven-hour flight to St. John’s, Canada, the easternmost city in North America.

It will be the first of 21 landings, with two-to-four-day stays in their destination cities, during a worldwide flight covering more than 22,000 miles.

The plan is for Galkin and Mosery to fly back to New Jersey on Nov. 18.

“Flying has always been a great release for me,” Galkin said Wednesday while checking out his plane with Mosery at the airport.

“As big as you feel down here, when you’re up there at 10,000 feet you and you look down, you realize how small a person you really are,” Galkin said.

Galkin’s latest worldwide flight was delayed more than two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It had been scheduled to begin in March 2020.

Galkin was born in Newark, grew up in Hoboken and has been a licensed pilot since 1970. He retired from his dental practice in Woodbridge in December 2020 at a time when he was already deep in planning his fourth worldwide flight via the Cessna 210 Centurion he purchased in 1977. He has logged more than one million miles on the plane.

Mosery, Galkin’s co-pilot, has been a pilot since 1979. He was born in Israel and immigrated to the U.S. as a boy with his parents, settling in Brooklyn.

Mosery, 64, lives in Manhattan and manages a real estate business. He has three children and two grandchildren. He and Galkin are longtime friends.

“He mentioned going around the world. I couldn’t resist,” Mosery said.

“I can’t wait to start the adventure,” he added.

Galkin’s age is part of why his latest worldwide flight is drawing notice.

The oldest person to fly around the world solo, Fred Lasby, was 82 when he did it in 1994, according to Guinness World Records. Guinness does not appear to list a record for the oldest person to fly with a co-pilot on a round-the-world journey.

While it seems reasonable to assume that comparatively few pilots have flown around the world in their mid-80s, either on their own or with a co-pilot, documentation is limited. The Maryland-based Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) does not know of or keep track of every circumnavigation, regardless of age, said spokesperson Eric Blinderman.

“They are milestones, but there are also risks and challenges,” Blinderman said in describing flying around the world.

Galkin cited “weather issues,” when asked about the biggest hurdle facing their flight.

“My plane is capable of flying into rain. We can’t fly into any thunderstorm activity,” Galkin said.

He will be using a weather avoidance system known as Stormscope on the trip.

“We’re able to pick up these storms, 100 miles in advance, and we’re able to fly around them, usually,” Galkin said.

Icing on the wings is also a concern.

“The only time we’ll probably have to deal with that icing condition might be when we leave St. John’s,” Galkin said.

“For each thousand feet you go up you lose about three degrees of temperature. So if it’s 50 degrees and if we go up 10,000 feet, we could be in a freezing level until we get to warmer air,” he explained.

Then, there’s the turbulence when passing near the equator.

“No matter how much planning you do, around the dquator — 5 or 10 degrees above or below — you run into what they call the Intertropical Convergence Zone, where the winds change dramatically. It’s always thunderstorm activity in there,” he said.

He and Mosery will stay in regular contact with friends and family via a satellite phone and a Garmin GPS tracking system that also provides unlimited text messages. Admirers have several options for tracking the flight, which are detailed on a website about the round-the-world flight.

It’s unclear how much the entire trip will cost.

Galkin said he expects to burn 2,300 gallons of aviation fuel at an estimated $10 per gallon. Hotels overseas are generally $120 or less per night, he said.

He acknowledged this likely will be his last trip around the world, but that doesn’t mean it will be his final flight. He’s also reminding everyone not to rule things out, just due to getting older.

“If you’re 80 years old and you want to start flying, there’s no reason why you can’t,” he said.

Please subscribe now and support the local journalism you rely on and trust.

Rob Jennings may be reached at [email protected].

©2022 Advance Local Media LLC. Visit nj.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.