For pilot André Borschberg, this is already his last leg in the cockpit: On Monday at 6:20 a.m. local time he took off from the Spanish airport of Seville. He is scheduled to arrive in the Egyptian capital Cairo on Wednesday morning at 9:40 a.m. local time.
The last and 17th stage of the world tour will then take Solar Impulse 2 back to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
That's where Borschberg started the Solar Impulse 2 adventure on March 9, 2015. Borschberg's colleague and co-pilot Bertrand Piccard will fly the plane on that final leg. Borschberg and Piccard took turns over the entire tour.
Spanien Sevilla vor dem Start von Solar Impulse 2
André Borschberg boards the plane for his personal last leg of the adventure
Huge bird with a tiny cabin
Even though Solar Impulse 2 has a wing span that equals that of a jumbo jet, the plane only has one seat. It can only reach speeds of 40 to 100 kilometers per hour (25 to 65 miles per hour).
Over the course of their world tour, the two adventurers have already broken numerous records. In the class of solar-powered planes, they reached a record distance of 7,212 kilometers (or 4,481 miles) of uninterrupted flight, when Solar Impulse was traveling from Japan to Hawaii.
