Santa’s sleigh is engaged in test flights over the North Pacific. You can follow the progress of those flights on our Tracker Map. As you can see, the focus of the test flights has shifted further west from Northern Canada where the first speed trials of the sleigh were run in the past two weeks.

Reports from sleigh test pilots are very positive. Santa has not yet flown the sleigh himself and we do not know when he will do so.

Why is the sleigh being moved to the North Pacific?

Santa spends a good deal of his time over water on Christmas Eve. It is very important that the sleigh perform well over water. Over the next several days the sleigh will be tested at various altitudes, in different kinds of weather, during the day and during the night, empty and heavily load — all to see how it performs over water. This will not be the first time these tests are run.

As we reported earlier the North Pole has requested additional reindeer to help with sleigh testing.

We also have news from the Sleigh Barn than four additional test sleighs have been authorized for construction and should deliver to the North Pole sleigh port in about a week. Each of these new sleighs will be slightly modified from earlier versions. Each will have to go through a strict test protocol. As each stage of testing is passed, a review with Santa of results is taken and new modifications are made to the sleigh design. Then more new sleighs are constructed and then tested. This cycle repeats itself over and over until around mid-December.