Both plane and pilot are well.
After a 71-hour 8-minute (three days and three nights) flight, the Swiss designed 100% solar powered aircraft and its lone pilot, Bertrand Piccard, touched down at Seville Airport in Spain at 7:38am local time. The total flight distance across the Atlantic from NYC was 6,765 km.
@ Solar Impulse
Solar Impulse 2 has now flown both the Pacific and Atlantic with out a single drop of fossil fuel. The first flights across these two oceans required over 5,100 litres of fuel. Clyde Pangborn made it from Japan to Washington State in 1931 after taking off with around 3,400 litres of fuel. In 1927, Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic, from Long Island, New York, to Paris, with around 1,700 litres of gasoline on board.
The approach into Seville airport starts at 2:40 of the video below.
“Solar Impulse is a demonstration of energy efficiency and smart energy management, similar to a flying smart grid. Just imagine your energy reserves increasing during flight and available day after day!” emphasized André Borschberg, CEO, Co-Founder and Pilot “Initially the aviation industry told us it was impossible to build such an airplane, but we believed we could do it thanks to all our partners’ technologies. Last year we showed that it could fly almost perpetually, and now we confirmed it with the transatlantic flight, proving again that change is possible when we have the right mindset and are not afraid to push back our own limits.”
The moment when Bertrand Piccard climbs from the cockpit after landing is shown in the Twitter video below:
Good morning #Seville! Do you have a lot of direct flights from #NYC? ? #futureisclean pic.twitter.com/ZCSMOOgva4
— Bertrand PICCARD (@bertrandpiccard) 23 juin 2016
The plane will not remain on a plain in Spain. The team will now prepare for the next flight to Abu Dhabi, where the adventure started in March 2015.
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