Solar Powered Plane Completes Cross-Country Flight

An anonymous reader writes "The Solar Impulse, a solar powered aircraft, landed at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport completing its historic cross-country flight. From the article: 'The flight plan for the revolutionary plane, powered by some 11,000 solar cells on its oversized wings, had called for it to pass the Statue of Liberty before landing early Sunday at New York. But an unexpected tear discovered on the left wing of the aircraft Saturday afternoon forced officials to scuttle the fly-by and proceed directly to JFK for a landing three hours earlier than scheduled. Pilot Andre Borschberg trumpeted the milestone of a plane capable of flying during the day and night, powered by solar energy, crossing the U.S. without the use of fuel.'"

Comments

With multiple stops along the way

[CastrTroy]

Although I realize this is probably a big achievement, I was a little disappointed to find out that this wasn't done in a single flight, but rather many smaller trips with stops in between. I can't believe this wasn't mentioned in the summary, Makes the news sound much more spectacular than it actually was. I really don't think you can count this as a cross-country flight when it had to make multiple stops along the way. Really, it's just a series of short flights in the same direction. It's not like when somebody runs across the country, and we just all assume it wasn't non-stop, with a plane we kind of assume that there wasn't any stops.