{"id":65051,"date":"2026-05-14T04:16:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T04:16:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/65051\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T04:16:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T04:16:09","slug":"bangkok-post-famed-swiss-solar-powered-plane-crashes-into-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/65051\/","title":{"rendered":"Bangkok Post – Famed Swiss solar-powered plane crashes into sea"},"content":{"rendered":"

PUBLISHED : 14 May 2026 at 09:45<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"The<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThe sun-powered plane Solar Impulse 2 successfully circumnavigated the world in 2016. (Photo: AFP)\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON – The experimental plane Solar Impulse 2, which completed a historic round-the-world trip in 2016 without using jet fuel, crashed into the Gulf of Mexico recently, its owner revealed.<\/p>\n

Flown by Swiss pilots Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg, Solar Impulse 2 circumnavigated the globe in 17 stages, covering a remarkable 26,700 miles (43,000km) across four continents, two oceans and three seas, in 23 days of flying without using a drop of fuel.<\/p>\n

Three years after the globe-trotting flight, the solar-powered vessel was sold to Skydweller Aero, which converted the aircraft into a drone to carry out \u201ccontrolled ditching,\u201d the company said in a press release issued Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Skydweller Aero said Solar Impulse 2 took off from Stennis, Mississippi on April 26 but crashed into the Gulf of Mexico on May 4.<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, a record-breaking flight of 8 days and 14 minutes validates the reality of perpetual, solar-powered flight in a military mission-relevant environment,\u201d the company said, in reference to a US Navy exercise in which the vessel was used.<\/p>\n

The US National Transportation Safety Board said it was investigating the accident.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PUBLISHED : 14 May 2026 at 09:45 The sun-powered plane Solar Impulse 2 successfully circumnavigated the world in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":65052,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[35484,25983,35483,35482,35485,35480,35479,35481,41,17],"class_list":["post-65051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-switzerland","tag-andre-borschberg","tag-aviation-safety","tag-bertrand-piccard","tag-gulf-of-mexico-crash","tag-ntsb-investigation","tag-skydweller-aero","tag-solar-impulse-2","tag-solar-powered-aircraft","tag-swiss","tag-switzerland"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116570999117333159","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65051\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}