48 states in 38 hours: Chicagoland pilots soar across US to break record
Some people dream of seeing each of America’s 48 mainland states in a lifetime. Bob Reynolds and John Skittone did it in 38 hours and 13 minutes.
The Chicagoland pilots say they set a world record in May for fastest journey by plane through all 48 contiguous U.S. states by touching down in each in just over a day and a half. They barely slept as their four-seat Cirrus SR22 Turbo darted across a meticulously planned route over the country’s shifting landscapes.
Skittone, 50, of Gurnee, piloted the first takeoff. Reynolds, 66, of Barrington, guided the plane in its final descent. While the duo is in the process of verifying the best time with Guinness World Records, they’re confident their journey set a new high mark.
“We didn’t break it by a little. We broke it by a lot,” Skittone said.
The feat to fly faster than the current record of 16 days, 12 hours and 56 minutes began on land as the pilots plotted their path. 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.
“We planned for the eventuality of going to the bathroom in the air, but it never happened,” Skittone said.
Reynolds and Skittone began watching the weather in April. They would wait for the right conditions to fly, they decided. In mid-May, the forecasts looked promising. They flew to their starting point in Maine and waited.
When they got there, the weather shifted again. It looked like their plane might run into storms as it passed through the South overnight. They had no contingency plan. If their plane broke or hit severe weather, they’d need to go home. But their window was closing: If they didn’t leave in the next day or two, they’d have to return to their lives in Chicago and put off their audacious trip.
“We decided, let’s roll the dice,” Reynolds said.
The trip started with a “machine-gun fire” of landings across New England. Throughout their trip, the pilots tried to pair rapid batches of landings with longer stretches in the sky. In the Northeast, that meant taking off and landing at 11 airports in 3 ½ hours.
As they worked their way over coastal mountain ranges and passed over the green Southeast in the dark of night, they barely slept. Reynolds estimated he slept for an hour and a half, as did Skittone. When Skittone tried to close his eyes as his partner flew, he couldn’t get his mind off the journey.
“I’m thinking about the flight plan. I’m thinking about the avionics. And so I’d wake up and look up, and look at the radio,” he said.
Over Texas, Reynolds flew past a thunderstorm as Skittone managed a brief nap. Lightning cracked a safe 20-plus miles away from the plane. It lit entire clouds. Between the loud booms, it was quiet at high altitude, Reynolds said.
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 sun rose behind their gray, red-tipped plane on a Thursday morning as the two soared above northern Arizona. The dim sky uncovered the sprawling canyon below, its red hues emerging in increasing light.
Most of the airports the pilots landed at were small, local airports that didn’t have air traffic control towers. In Winnemucca, Nevada, rounded mountains opened up onto a huge valley and an airport that looked like a “bowling alley gutter,” Reynolds said. In California, they landed on a “postage stamp, a number on a sidewalk,” he added.
As the sun set again on the men’s second day of travel, they readied to land at an airport they knew had “nontraditional lighting.” Smoke from wildfires in Canada was only making the maneuver trickier when they realized the airport really had no lighting.
“They didn’t have a candle lit,” Reynolds said. An air traffic controller helped them get to the ground.
On the second to last leg of the trip from Waukegan to Benton Harbor, the pilots decided to put on life jackets and fly over Lake Michigan in the dark of night, despite always flying around the lake before.
The plane then took off one last time, headed for South Bend. Sixteen minutes later, it landed on their 48th runway between two lines of yellow lights. It was 11:59 p.m.
“And wheels are down,” Skittone said.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah! Let’s get it in and turn this friggin’ engine off!” said Reynolds.
Guinness World Records confirmed Skittone and Reynolds are pursuing the record and the world record keeper will make its determination in about 12 to 15 weeks. To verify their time, the pilots are submitting extensive video footage of their journey and testimony from witnesses who saw them land. The Tribune reviewed footage of their journey, flight logs and a GPS tracker documenting the trip.
‘It shrinks the world’
Skittone took his first flight at age 21, eager to enjoy flying before he got older. As a kid dreaming of being an astronaut, he would bike down his street and see pilots land at Chicago Executive Airport, then called Palwaukee Municipal Airport. He took up flying when an older pilot taught him it wasn’t as expensive as he had thought.
Reynolds, too, fell in love with flying as a young man when he hitched a ride on a small plane to fly over Lake Michigan. He tried out gliders, then got his pilot license at 46 when he could finally afford regular flights.
When a fellow pilot suggested the two fly together, they quickly meshed in the cockpit. Skittone, a financial adviser, flies “like a poet,” Reynolds said. Reynolds, an IT business owner, is an ambitious “airport collector,” Skittone said. The adventure hunters have become one another’s “hype men,” both said. And their loved ones put up with quite a bit, they said, because they fly a lot.
“We come up with crazy ideas and we influence each other, maybe to our detriment,” Skittone joked.
On their first big trip together, the duo flew to Alaska, a favorite destination of Skittone’s. Reynolds, who spices up his flights using a map pinned with America’s best bars, guitar stores and national parks, called for detours.
They stopped in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, buzzed along the Grand Tetons and circled over Yellowstone. They flew by Sturgis, Spearfish Canyon, Devil’s Tower and the Royal Gorge.
After close passes at Mount St. Helens, Mount Rainier and North America’s tallest mountain, the 20,310-foot Denali in Alaska, the pairing was set: They loved to fly together. The pandemic created an opportunity for their next big adventure.
As COVID-19 halted commercial flights across the country, usually clogged runways at the country’s biggest commercial airports opened up. Reynolds and Skittone decided to land their small plane at all of them. They touched down at O’Hare International Airport, Los Angeles International, the three major New York airports and over 30 more typically bustling commercial aviation hubs.
But that wasn’t enough. Skittone had long dreamed of flying to all 48 mainland states in one trip. One day, inspired by a friend who had set her own world record, he stumbled upon the old record for the fastest time to visit each contiguous state in one trip, he said.
He knew he could beat it. He called Reynolds with the idea. The co-pilot needed little convincing. Reynolds got the all-clear from his wife, Skittone from his fiancee.
Reynolds and Skittone’s flight relied on a rich medley of thoughtful planning, flexibility and good luck. They carefully mapped out their route, organized witnesses and stops and made contingency plans. They waited for good weather and were carried by an abundance of tail winds. Their plane didn’t have any mechanical issues. Still, once confirmed, their record could someday fall.
“This is certainly breakable, but the next team is really going to have to work hard,” Reynolds said.
Reynolds said the two are now considering flying to the southern tip of South America. But regardless of what accolades the men get, they’ll have always seen the sprawling plains, the canyon sunrises, the valleys, mountains, hills and lakes of a country that now seems more in reach than ever before.
The two men’s flying hobbies are supported by their families. Skittone taught his daughter, a pilot now, how to fly. His mother used to track all of his flights, sitting at a computer for hours to make sure he was safe, he said.
Reynolds’ wife jokes she’s on board for his flying as long as his life insurance is paid up. His wife and two daughters had already long supported his motorcycle riding before he took to the air, he said.
Reynolds described flying as “decision-making with consequences.” It allows him to take on challenges and think. It’s a cheaper hobby than many might expect — gas for the 48-state trip cost around $4,000 — and it gets even more fun when pilots become skilled enough to fly into the clouds, he said.
Flying opens the world up, Skittone said. Perception changes when New York feels as easy to get to from the northern suburbs as Gary, he added.
“I guess I love flying for the way it shrinks the world. I feel like I can get into an airplane, go absolutely anywhere I want, whenever I want, and see the world from a perspective I could have only dreamed about before I was a pilot,” he said.
