Exclusive: Pilot of Solar Plane Shares Secrets of 5-Day Flight
Swiss pilot battles exhaustion and weather during endurance mission.
Swiss pilot André Borschberg still has a long flight ahead. He took off Sunday afternoon from Nagoya, Japan, in the Solar Impulse 2, an experimental craft powered only by sunlight that is attempting to set a record as the first plane of its kind to circumnavigate the globe.
After several weather delays, Borschberg is finally en route to Hawaii, on the most difficult leg of the expedition, dubbed the “Earhart Leg” because it is roughly the same path on which Amelia Earhart disappeared 77 years ago. Borschberg is expected in Honolulu by Friday or Saturday.
We spoke with Borschberg via satellite uplink from his cramped cabin in the Solar Impulse 2:
Extremely fine. It was a very emotional start
