Historic Everest flight retraced

The grandson of one of the first men to fly over Mount Everest has commemorated the historic feat 80 years on.

Charles Douglas-Hamilton flew to the world's highest peak as a passenger in a modern Jetstream 41 Turboprop.

In 1933, his grandfather Douglas and fellow pilot David Fowler MacIntyre had to contend with freezing temperatures and cracked oxygen pipes.

It was a victory for British aviation, and paved the way for important advancements in flight technology.

The first pilots also used the flight to check for traces of the 1922 Everest expedition by Mallory and Irvine. They were hoping to find evidence the climbers had reached the summit - but they saw nothing.

Less than 30 years after the invention of powered flight, British pilots were looking for an aviation record to beat their American rivals - who had already flown over both the North and South Poles.

The summit of Everest provided that challenge.

Two specially-modified Westland-Wallace bi-planes with open cockpits were used for the feat, taking off from an airstrip in northern India to fly into the Himalayas over the 29,000ft (8,848m) summit.