Friday, Jul 03, 2015

Dubai: The Solar Impulse 2 touched down in Hawaii’s Kaleala airport outside Honululu at around 8pm UAE time on Friday after an epic five-day flight from Nagoya, Japan.

This was the eighth leg of the solar-powered plane’s historic 35,000km journey around the world.

Veteran Swiss aviator Andre Borschberg spent more than four days flying from Japan in the Solar Impulse 2, in what was the “the longest and most tiring night of this flight,” mission organisers said.

It crossed a last cold weather front before Hawaii, which organisers described as “jumping over the wall” before the final stretch towards the Pacific archipelago.

Before that hurdle, organisers had tweeted “@andreborschberg is tired. W/ turbulence at 8’000 feet & a cold front close, SITUATION IS DIFFICULT.”

But later came the celebratory tweet, saying the plane had “successfully crossed the second & last front separating him from Hawaii! Everybody clap your hands!”

So far, Borschberg has flown more than 104 hours — easily beating the previous longest solo endurance flight by Steve Fossett, who flew for 76 hours and 45 minutes in 2006.

Borschberg was alone and entirely self-reliant in the unpressurised cockpit.

Flying at altitudes of more than 9,000 metres, he had to use oxygen tanks to breathe and experience huge swings in temperature throughout the day.

The whole trip from Japan to Hawaii took around 120 hours.

The Swiss aviator napped for only 20 minutes at a time to maintain control of the plane. He is equipped with a parachute and life raft, in case he needs to ditch in the Pacific.

The experimental solar-powered aircraft, which has 17,000 solar cells in its frame, left Japan at around 1800 GMT last Sunday after spending a month in the central city of Nagoya.

The plane was originally scheduled to fly directly from Nanjing in China to Hawaii, but bad weather along the way forced a diversion to Japan that stretched to a month.

Solar Impulse 2 set off from Abu Dhabi earlier this year in a multi-leg attempt to fly around the world without a single drop of fuel.

Its wingspan is longer than that of a jumbo jet, but it weighs only 2.3 tonnes — about the same as a car.

Staff Report

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