Elf Max just shared via SantaUpdate.com that the countdown to Santa’s launch just reached the 300-day mark.

What does that mean here in Flight Command?

Well, there’s two things really going on right now here: the design phase of Santa’s new sleigh and flight classes for sleigh pilots and tracking department personnel.

Not many people think of the stuff we do this time of the year. But it is actually very important work.

Our goal is to improve on Santa’s speed and efficiency every Christmas. He just needs to be able to do things a little bit faster. That means designing the new sleigh in different ways that can give Santa more speed. And it means training all of our elves to find ways to help Santa get around the world in both a safe and efficient way.

It’s not easy. Just shaving a couple of minutes off of Santa’s time from last Christmas is a huge effort.

After all, elves at North Pole Flight Command have been doing this for decades. It takes a lot of education in math and science.

So we keep track of how much time we have until Santa needs to take off again on his merry mission. There are hundreds of different things that have to happen before Santa can launch.

We have to design the sleigh. Then it has to be built. Then it has to be flight tested. Then it has to be re-design, built and tested again. We do this over and over and over until we all feel we have done everything we can to improve things for Santa.

And now we have only 300 days to get that done.

All year long we will be marking time. So we appreciate when Elf Max posts these milestone dates. They remind us that we have very important work to complete.