An airplane powered solely by the sun landed safely in Seville in Spain early on Thursday after an almost three-day flight across the Atlantic from New York in one of the longest legs of the first ever fuel-less flight around the world.
The single-seat Solar Impulse 2 touched down shortly after 7:30am local time in Seville after leaving John F Kennedy International Airport at about 2:30am EDT on Jun 20.
The flight of just over 71 hours was the 15th leg of the round-the-world journey by the plane piloted in turns by Swiss aviators Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg.
"Oh-la-la, absolutely perfect," Piccard said after landing, thanking his engineering crew for their efforts.
With a cruising speed of around 70 kilometres an hour (43 miles per hour), similar to an average car, the plane has more than 17,0000 solar cells built in to wings with a span bigger than that of a Boeing 747.
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