Hey,
so you’re here to find out what this site is about? Well here is the Story Behind the 60 Hour Challenge.
It all started with a single tweet. As someone who just loves travel and planes, turning left when boarding a plane and getting into a wide body business class seat has always been the dream. Usually that luxury is locked behind a massive price tag on long haul flights over to America or Asia.
Then I saw a post on Twitter (or X if you’re that way inclined) showing someone doing exactly that on a short European flight to Madrid on a 777. Digging into the replies, someone mentioned that Finnair regularly flies an A350 with their famous lie flat seats on a standard European segment between Heathrow and Helsinki.
I immediately opened up Google Flights and Skyscanner to take a look. The good news was that it was entirely possible to book a 3 hour flight in that dream wide body business class cabin. The bad news was that booking it as a return flight out of the UK was through the roof.
But then I checked the pricing for booking a single from Helsinki to Heathrow instead of a return. It turned out to be far more reasonable.
And that was where the real challenge came in. How on earth do I fly to Helsinki on the absolute cheap just to catch that single flight home?
A flight route so ridiculous it created a challenge
I went back to Skyscanner and started messing around with cheap single leg budget flights. What came back was a multi stop itinerary so completely ridiculous it took me through four different countries before even reaching Finland. It was chaotic, exhausting, and absolutely perfect.
There is zero accommodation booked. No hotels, no beds, no stopping. The challenge is to keep moving the entire time.
| Day & Time | Flight Leg & Operator | Connection Time |
| Wed, 11:20 – 14:15 Norwich (NWI) ➔ Faro (FAO) | Ryanair FR5879 | 7h 55m layover in Faro |
| Wed, 22:10 – 02:15 Faro (FAO) ➔ Amsterdam (AMS) | Transavia KL3282 | 6h 15m overnight in Amsterdam |
| Thu, 08:30 – 09:35 Amsterdam (AMS) ➔ Billund (BLL) | KLM Cityhopper KL1291 | 10h 00m layover in Billund |
| Thu, 19:35 – 22:10 Billund (BLL) ➔ Riga (RIX) | AirBaltic BT148 | 9h 10m overnight in Riga |
| Fri, 07:20 – 08:20 Riga (RIX) ➔ Helsinki (HEL) | AirBaltic BT301 | 7h 40m sprint in Helsinki |
| Fri, 16:00 – 17:05 Helsinki (HEL) ➔ London Heathrow (LHR) | Finnair AY1337 (A350 Widebody) |
If you want to see where we are, you’ll have to fire up Flightradar24, plug in our flight numbers from the table above, and track us manually as soon as we head down the runway next Wednesday!
And just like that, the 5 countries in 60 hours challenge was born.
When I started telling others about the craziness of this routing, it became apparent that this was not just an adventure I was going to share alone. Alex and Mo were soon reaching out to see if this was actually happening. The second I said yes, they were instantly in.
Turning a jolly into a mission for GOSH
What started out as a funny way for three mates to hack a cheap flight route quickly evolved into something much bigger. This became more than just a jolly. I realised this madness was an opportunity to raise serious funds for an incredible cause: Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity (GOSH).
We initially set up the JustGiving pages to collect standard donations, which was great, but I wanted to take it one step further. I wanted to make the whole journey interactive and inject some real energy into the chaos to raise as much as possible for the cause.
That is where the live community missions came in. Now, instead of just travelling, we are pushing ourselves through an intense marathon across Europe, live streaming community sponsored missions in every single country we touch down in.
But I’ve added a massive element of risk to keep us going. While we are in each country, we have to complete these challenges under a strict, ticking deadline. Our connection times are already razor thin, so if we get bogged down trying to complete a mission, the whole domino rally of flights collapses. Missing just one connection means the whole trip fails, and we lose out on that wide body business class experience we planned the entire journey around in the first place.
The Missions
To keep the fundraising completely transparent, we are paying for 100% of our own flights, travel logistics and t-shirts entirely out of our own pockets.
Each of our live country challenges has up to 10 sponsorship slots available at £20.00 each. This is where you come in, and here is exactly how your money is split:
- £14.50 goes directly into the donation pool for Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity.
- £5.00 goes straight into the budget to buy that specific mission’s physical souvenir.
- £0.50 covers the processing fee charged by Stripe.
Because the souvenir money pools together, it creates a dynamic budget for the live stream. If 5 people sponsor a mission, that gives us a £25.00 budget to hunt down that item on camera, while a guaranteed £72.50 lands straight with GOSH. If all 10 slots fill up, the budget hits £50.00, and the charity gets £145.00!
Every single item successfully tracked down and brought back across Europe will then be entered into our grand charity auction after the challenge, with 100% of those final bids going straight to GOSH to double our fundraising impact.
Thank you so much for backing the journey, watching the streams, and helping us turn a nerdy aviation dream into a massive win for the kids at GOSH.