The Solar Impulse 2 airplane finished up more than seven weeks of flying across America with an overnight hop to New York City that sets the stage for a climactic Atlantic crossing.
Solar Impulse co-founder and pilot Andre Borschberg took off from Lehigh Valley International Airport in Pennsylvania at 11:18 p.m. ET (8:18 p.m. PT) Friday. The timing was dictated by the weather as well as the logistics required to get the airplane through the East Coast’s normally crowded airspace during the middle of the night.
“I’m looking forward to seeing Lady Liberty,” Borschberg said after takeoff.
Borschberg required only a couple of hours to travel less than 100 miles from Lehigh Valley to New York, and then did a series of photo ops over New York landmarks.
The plane flew over the Statue of Liberty around 2 a.m. ET Saturday (11 p.m. PT Friday), and the plane landed at 3:59 a.m. ET (12:59 a.m. PT) at New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport.
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