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PHOENIX, May 12 (UPI) -- The sun-powered Solar Impulse 2 plane landed in Tulsa, Okla., late Thursday night after an 18-hour, 10-minute flight from Phoenix. The plane's landing at 11:15 p.m. Central Daylight Time at Tulsa International Airport was confirmed on the Solar Impulse 2's website.
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Bertrand Piccard covered a total distance of 975 miles, flying over Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma.
Andre Borschberg, who also pilots the one-man plane, traveled to Tulsa with the Solar Impulse team.
Until two days before takeoff, engineers were originally planning a flight from Phoenix to Kansas City, Mo., but because of difficult weather conditions over the plains in, they found a different landing site.
The experimental plane took off from Phoenix Goodyear Airport, Ariz., at 3:05 a.m. Mountain Standard Time.
Last week, the plane went from San Francisco to Phoenix.
"It's a new era. It's not science fiction. It's today," Piccard said from California after his successful one-man voyage. "It exists and clean technologies can do the impossible."
The plane is 236 feet long -- wider than a Boeing 747 -- but it flies at the speed of an average car.
Its four electric engines are powered by more than 17,000 solar cells.
Last year, Piccard and Borschberg attempted to circumnavigate the globe without using fuel. It began on March 9, 2015, in Abu Dhabi. The trip continued across Asia before Borschberg completed the world's longest non-stop solo flight, four days and 52 minutes, from Japan to Hawaii.
But the plane's battery was damaged and they called off their attempt to complete the trip in a year.
This time the group plans two more flights over the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea before landing back in Abu Dhabi to complete the around-the-world trip of 27,000 miles.
