Swiss pilot and adventurer Bertrand Piccard has flown his way into the record books again after completing the world’s first intercontinental flight in a giant solar-powered plane.Piccard, a 54-year-old balloonist, landed in the Moroccan capital Rabat under a full moon late Tuesday after completing the 19-hour voyage from Madrid on his experimental carbon-fibre aircraft.Dozens of people, including his wife Michele as well as flight organisers and Moroccan officials, gathered on the runway in Rabat to witness the touchdown of the Solar Impulse after it crossed the Strait of Gibraltar.Piccard, who made the first non-stop around-the-world balloon flight 13 years ago, thrust his fists into the air as he emerged from the Solar Impulse, an aircraft as big as an Airbus A340 but as light as an average family car.“Simply the flight over the Gibraltar Strait was a magical moment and represents one of the highlights of my carrier as an aeronaut,” Piccard said as the ground crew opened the cockpit.To qualify as an intercontinental flight, Piccard had only to cross the Strait of Gibraltar -- 14 kilometres (nine miles) at its narrowest point -- from Europe to Africa.“Solar Impulse has demonstrated that a solar-powered airplane can fly day and night using no fuel. The next challenge is to fly around the world,” the organisers said on their website solarimpulse.com.Piccard took off from Madrid before dawn for the 830-kilometre (over 500-mile) flight and needed an oxygen mask to breathe in the freezing high altitude as he soared to a maximum height of 27,000 feet (8,230 metres).“For one hour I had the full moon on my right and I had the sunrise on my left and that was absolutely gorgeous,” Piccard told AFP in an interview from the cockpit shortly after setting out from the Spanish capital.“I had all the colours of the rainbow in the sky and also on the ground.”
