The Solar Impulse 2 has made world history again by completing a 71-hour-long cross-Atlantic flight from JFK Airport in New York to Seville Airport in Spain, not long after the world’s first cross-Pacific flights was successfully done in April this year,
Pilot Bertrand Piccard, who could be seen on a live stream of the entire journey, says, “This is another dream come true, after the amazing 117 hour flight in 2015 from Japan to Hawaii”.
Although the Japan – Hawaii flight was the longest in terms of time flown, the cross-Atlantic flight represents the longest distance he has had to fly this year, a total of 6 272km.
The Swiss pilot arrived ahead of schedule on Wednesday evening, Â June 22, already but said they “will be performing holding patterns at night for safety reasons, as it is safer to land in daylight after a long flight such as this one. Moreover, we would like to avoid thermals on the runway that we would encounter in the morning.
“The crossing of the Atlantic arrived much sooner than we thought it would… The winds really seem to be in our favor this year!”
He took off at 06:00 (universal time) on Monday morning, 20 June and arrived in Spain shortly after sunrise, around 07:00 (universal time) on Thursday morning, 23 June.
