Bertrand Piccard, one of the two founders of Solar Impulse, has completed the fifth leg of the pioneering journey in Si2, landing early Tuesday morning at Chongqing Jiangbei International Airport in China. The leg from Mandalay, Myanmar, to Chongqing was a marathon of epic proportions, taking Piccard 20 hours and 29 minutes to complete.
At 742 nm, the leg was not the longest of the trip so far. The flight between Oman and India was about 50 nm further; however, the flight from Mandalay to Chongqing lasted more than five hours longer. The reasons for the delay in landing were heavy air traffic flowing into the Chongqing airport and strong headwinds at lower altitudes that at times had the Si2 flying backward.
