Elf News Reporter at North Pole News Network
Elf Meg graduated from Southern North Pole University with a degree in journalism. For several years she was a star reporter for the North Pole Gazette and then briefly served as a producer for North Pole Radio News. She brings her experience in media to North Pole Flight Command, serving as both an Elf News Reporter for North Pole Radio News and Managing Editor of North Pole Flight Command.com
Elf Meg Nogg
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Thanksgiving is a major celebration at the North Pole and all personnel associated with the test flights of Santa’s sleigh are coming home to take a break and celebrate the day. This happened at Halloween as well. All test pilots, reindeer, engineers and designers are expected home no later than November 23rd.

The sleigh, as of this date, is officially somewhere in Mexico and has been pushing north for several days.

When those crews return they will be piloting version #9 of Santa’s sleigh.

Per policy, we cannot disclose technical details or differences in each version of the sleigh. It is quite normal for a new sleigh design to go through several versions during the testing process.

A good break from test flights give the reindeer opportunity to rest up and for teams to gather together to compare notes before heading back out to continue testing the sleigh.

Elf News Reporter at North Pole News Network
Elf Meg graduated from Southern North Pole University with a degree in journalism. For several years she was a star reporter for the North Pole Gazette and then briefly served as a producer for North Pole Radio News. She brings her experience in media to North Pole Flight Command, serving as both an Elf News Reporter for North Pole Radio News and Managing Editor of North Pole Flight Command.com
Elf Meg Nogg
Latest posts by Elf Meg Nogg (see all)

The past several years, as Santa has worked to improve on his performance record, he has arrived increasingly earlier than ever before. Many years ago, to help let believers know he was close by on Christmas Eve, Santa started sending out “bedtime advisories”, an alert that helps believers know when to go to bed on Christmas Eve.

The way this has worked is very simple. Santa sends the advisory himself, directly from the sleigh.

Improvements to this system are announced today.

Santa will still send the advisory from the sleigh before he gets to each area. It is believed this advisory will come between 8pm and 10pm local time on Christmas Eve. This works nicely with Santa’s preferred delivery window of 10pm to 4am every Christmas.

But now when Santa sends the advisory it will be shared on all websites of the North Pole and, new this year, there will be sharing of that information during North Pole Radio News reports during the Tracking Santa Around the World Radio show that runs every December 23rd to 25th each year.

Radio personality and London-based news anchor Elf Victoria Wassail will tackle the assignment of announcing bedtime advisories on Kringle Radio this year.

Santa is hopeful that these efforts to better publicize the advisories will result in better compliance with early bedtime expectations on Christmas Eve.

Elf News Reporter at North Pole News Network
Elf Meg graduated from Southern North Pole University with a degree in journalism. For several years she was a star reporter for the North Pole Gazette and then briefly served as a producer for North Pole Radio News. She brings her experience in media to North Pole Flight Command, serving as both an Elf News Reporter for North Pole Radio News and Managing Editor of North Pole Flight Command.com
Elf Meg Nogg
Latest posts by Elf Meg Nogg (see all)

Version 8 of Santa’s Sleigh will head into Sector 5 direct from the North Pole this morning.

It is not known how long the sleigh will be in Sector 5 or where precisely it is headed. We are not even sure how long Version 8 of this year’s sleigh will be flown. We have been told that versions 9 and 10 are nearly ready to go.

After the Halloween break it is hoped by many that we get better news coming from the test flight teams. So far designers and engineers have been stymied by mysterious problems. As they have tried to work through them the sleigh has seemed to developed problems in areas where there were no problems before. This is especially surprising since this year’s design is based on last year’s sleigh, which was used in a record setting run by Santa.

Test teams are not prepared to answer our questions about this year’s sleigh. Normally we could share news of what the test flights were doing but this year it is a different story.

We are hoping for good news soon. Designers, engineers and test pilots are weary of having to report discouraging news all the time.

For the record, Santa himself says he is not worried about the sleigh. He has expressed confidence in the development team in figuring things out so that this year’s flight can be successful.

Elf News Reporter at North Pole News Network
Elf Meg graduated from Southern North Pole University with a degree in journalism. For several years she was a star reporter for the North Pole Gazette and then briefly served as a producer for North Pole Radio News. She brings her experience in media to North Pole Flight Command, serving as both an Elf News Reporter for North Pole Radio News and Managing Editor of North Pole Flight Command.com
Elf Meg Nogg
Latest posts by Elf Meg Nogg (see all)

A break for all test pilots and reindeer working the test flight teams has been ordered. Starting tomorrow, October 28th, teams will be returning to the North Pole for the break. After the North Pole Halloween Party scheduled for October 31st the pilots and reindeer will return to active duty.

This break gives crews from Research and Development to position Version 8 of Santa’s Sleigh to begin testing Tuesday, November 1st. We are awaiting a decision from Flight Command about where those tests will take place.

We also anticipate clearing the tracking map of past places where the sleigh has flown since July. This will give us all a fresh take on the test flights as we go into the month of November.

November is expected to be a big month of testing.