Solar powered plane breaks non-stop solo flight record

The solar-powered plane Solar Impulse 2, is on the riskiest leg of its round-the-globe flight attempt, and the Guardian reports that it is approaching Hawaii after a record-breaking flight which has tested its exhausted pilot to the limit in “difficult” conditions.

Veteran Swiss aviator Andre Borschberg, has now spent more than four days flying from Japan in the aircraft and he is expected to land on the Pacific US island state on Friday if all goes well.

“After the longest and most tiring night of this flight, bringing the pilot and aircraft to the limits, Andre is now back under the oceanic sunlight,” mission organisers said.

By the early hours of the morning, the plane had already travelled some 91% of the way to Hawaii, having flown 7,471km and it only had a few hundred kilometres to go.

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

The pioneering plane is due to land Friday morning local time at Kalaeloa airport on the main Hawaiian island of Oahu, according to the Guardian.

Borschberg earlier clocked up more than 100 hours in the air – suprassing the previous longest solo endurance flight by Steve Fossett, who flew for 76 hours and 45 minutes in 2006.

The whole trip from Japan to Hawaii was expected to take some 120 hours, and the Swiss aviator has been napping 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 abandon the aircraft in the Pacific.

The experimental solar-powered aircraft left Japan on Sunday – the early hours of Monday local time – after spending a month in the central city of Nagoya.

It 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.

Borschberg is alone and entirely self-reliant in the unpressurised cockpit. Traveling at altitudes of more than 9,000 meters, he has to use oxygen tanks to breathe and experiences huge swings in temperature throughout the day.

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. The plane has 17,000 solar cells and on-board rechargeable lithium batteries, allowing it to fly through the night. Its wingspan is longer than that of a jumbo jet but it weighs only 2.3 tonnes – about the same as a car.