Still, traveling at average speeds of only 30 miles (48 kilometers) per hour, it took Solar Impulse 2 longer to reach Dayton than a auto – the typical road trip from Tulsa is around 12 hours.
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A solar-powered airplane that landed in Oklahoma last week is headed to OH on the latest leg of its around-the-world journey.
The Swiss-made Solar Impulse 2 took off from Tulsa International Airport about 5 a.m. Saturday with a destination of Dayton, Ohio.
Swiss pilots Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg alternate legs of the aircraft, with Borschberg at the controls during today’s flight over the U.S. He’s been tweeting during his journey, including this snapshot of the sun rising over Oklahoma. It continued with several more legs across Asia before Borschberg completed the world’s longest non-stop solo flight, a four-day, 21-hour and 52-minute excursion from Japan to Hawaii.
“Dayton, Ohio not only brings us a step closer to attempting the Atlantic Crossing but also marks the birthplace of an aviation revolution: the success of the first flight with a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft”, the team wrote in its blog.
The stop in Dayton is a special milestone – the home of the Wright Brothers, who completed the first controlled, sustained flight of a powered aircraft.
“The objective is still to reach NY as soon as possible”.
To complete the epic journey, the aeroplane needs to get to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates where the journey started in March previous year.
Takeoff from Tulsa International Airport came at 4:23 a.m. CT (2:23 a.m. PT).
It departed from northern California in the early hours of May 2 and landed at the airport southwest of Phoenix 16 hours later.
As The Two-Way has reported, “the fuel-free flight project started in March 2015, but it was put on hold in July after the plane’s batteries developed problems during a five-day flight from Japan to Hawaii”.
Solar Impulse is wider than a 747 jumbo jet but weighs just 2.3 tonnes.
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While in Tulsa, the plane had been stored in an American Airlines hanger at TIA.
