After being airborne for more than 73 hours and travelling over 23,000 miles the destination airport was just appearing on the horizon. Just when Steve Fossett and his Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer had the hard part of the journey behind them, things went wrong fast.
As solo, sleep deprived adventurer, and pilot Steve Fossett was preparing for his descent out of 40,000 feet for destination airport Kent International Airport in the United Kingdom the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer experienced a large scale electrical malfunction. After declaring the Mayday, mission control realized that the situation was dire and an emergency landing would have to be conducted at either Cardiff or Bournemouth. The descent and change in temperature caused the windscreen to ice up forcing Fossett to land the aircraft virtually in the blind.
With only 200 pounds of fuel remaining the Global Atlantic Flyer touched down at 17:07UTC on Saturday February 11th. The touchdown at Bournemouth Airport was further complicated when two tyres burst. With the adrenaline at “max flow” Fossett was able to stop the aircraft within the confines of the runway.
Steve said: "It was too exciting of a finish. There were many obstacles to overcome from the moment I took off from Kennedy Space Centre, from the challenging takeoff, difficult cockpit conditions for the early part of the flight, severe turbulence over India and constant concerns over the weakness of the jet streams due to the less than favourable weather patterns around the world. "But never during all of this would I have believed that 45mins out of Kent I would be in an emergency situation the like of which I have rarely experienced before." Craig Glenday, the editor of Guinness World Records, was present to award Steve with his certificate for breaking the record for the Longest Non Stop Flight. The record will probably stand for a long time - a total distance of 26,389.3 miles covered in 76 hours and 45 minutes.
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