After a 16-hour flight, the pilot Andre Borschberg got off the plane and told the crowd it’s much more hard to handle the plane on the ground than in the air, especially when it’s windy.
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The solar-powered plane, which stores energy in batteries for when the sun is not shining, will stop in NY before a transatlantic flight to Europe.
Solar Impulse 2 flies over San Francisco, April 23, 2016.
Swiss pilot Andre Borschberg is at the helm of the plane, which began its circumnavigation of the globe past year.
The plane restarted its round-the-world journey last month, flying from Hawaii to California in a risky, three-day, nonstop flight. It is equipped with more than 17,000 solar cells that power propellers and charge batteries, which store energy for night-time flight.
Solar Impulse 2 can reach the maximum altitude of 28,000 feet (8.5 km), according to the project.
“The two record-breaking solo flights of André Borschberg from Nagoya to Hawaii and Bertrand Piccard from Hawaii to San Francisco give a clear message: everybody could use the same technologies on the ground to halve our world’s energy consumption, save natural resources and improve our quality of life.”
From Goodyear, Solar Impulse 2 plans to head to Kansas City, with a 6-hour pit stop on the way to Albuquerque.
Before that, the onward flight had been delayed for nine months while repairs were carried out on the plane’s battery system, which had suffered heat damage on its trip from Japan.
The voyage began in March 2015, taking off from Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, and made stops in Oman, Myanmar, China and Japan.
In a precursor to their globe-circling quest, the two men completed a multi-flight crossing of the United States by solar power in 2013.
“We have demonstrated it is feasible to fly many days, many nights that the technology works”, said Borschberg, 63.
The plane will make a final U.S. stop in NY before a transatlantic flight to Europe. The latest trip was the plane’s 10th leg. Piccard and Borschberg are aiming to travel to NY by the beginning of June to start preparing for the crossing of the Atlantic.
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The crew took several months to fix damage from tropical high temperatures during the first Pacific stage, a 4,000-mile flight between Japan and Hawaii.
