Australian Pilot Flies CubCrafters Carbon Cub UL 16,800 nm from Yakima to Port Macquarie in 30-Day Journey

David Green, an Australian pilot, has completed a ferry flight of his new CubCrafters Carbon Cub UL, nicknamed "Dusty," from Yakima, Washington, to Port Macquarie, New South Wales, Australia. The journey covered approximately 16,800 nautical miles and took nearly 144 hours of flight time across 30 days.

Dusty departed Yakima on July 22, 2026, with an early stop at EAA AirVenture Oshkosh in Wisconsin before heading east toward the Atlantic. The route included long overwater legs, international border crossings, customs clearances, permits, and rapidly changing weather across multiple countries. Green arrived in Port Macquarie on August 20, 2026. The final leg, from Birdsville to Port Macquarie, took 7 hours and 9 minutes.

CubCrafters officials described the journey as an unofficial world record for a flight of this type by a Cub-style backcountry aircraft. "Flying Dusty home from Yakima to Australia has been a heck of an adventure," Green said. "Nearly 17,000 nautical miles across oceans, continents, and some incredibly remote parts of the world, and the Carbon Cub just kept going. The airplane performed beautifully, and I trusted it every step of the way." Brad Damm, Vice President of CubCrafters, said, "David could have put the airplane in a container and shipped it to Australia. Instead, he pointed the nose toward home and flew it more than halfway around the world."

Green's flight follows other milestone flights for the Carbon Cub UL. On October 28, 2025, pilot Jon Kotwicki climbed to a verified altitude of 37,609 feet over the California coast, an unofficial world altitude record for Cub-type aircraft, surpassing the previous 30,203-foot benchmark set by Caro Bayley in a Piper PA-18 Super Cub in 1951. In July 2026, a Carbon Cub UL registered N21UL completed the first transatlantic crossing by a Carbon Cub UL, traveling approximately 6,900 nautical miles from Idaho to Poland.

Ferry flights of this kind sit at the intersection of aircraft delivery and brand demonstration: rather than crating a light aircraft for freight, a pilot flies it home and the manufacturer turns the trip into proof of range, reliability, and pilot confidence in the type. CubCrafters has now stacked three such milestones for the Carbon Cub UL in under a year — an altitude record, a transatlantic first, and this circumnavigation-scale delivery — each unofficial but each used to build a narrative around one aircraft line.

For light and experimental aircraft makers, these flights function as low-cost marketing that traditional flight testing cannot replicate: a customer's own aircraft, flown by its owner, through real weather, borders, and fuel stops, rather than a controlled demonstration. The credibility comes from the fact that Green owns the airplane and chose to fly it rather than ship it.

What would firm up this story is whether any of these three flights — the altitude climb, the transatlantic crossing, or this delivery flight — is submitted for formal record recognition by an aviation record body, which would move the claims from company-described "unofficial" records to verified ones.