The $150m aircraft, Solar Impulse 2 team, on Monday said in Nanjing that the sun-powered lightweight aircraft has delayed its planned five-day crossing of the Pacific until the weekend.
The leader of the team, a Swiss pilot, Bertrand Piccard, said the plane however scheduled to take off for the crossing from Nanjing to Hawaii, the longest for a solar plane.
Piccard landed the aircraft in Nanjing on April 21 to complete the sixth leg of a round-the-world journey to promote renewable energy.
He said they had been due to make a brief stop and quickly travel on, but were held up by weather and safety concerns.
“The team had to find a weather slot,” he said.
Piccard said Andre Borschberg, his partner in the Solar Impulse effort, was to pilot the single-seater plane on the next leg.
He said the Impulse was powered by more than 17,000 solar cells installed on its wings.
Piccard said Solar Impulse 2 was scheduled to make 12 stops in its flight around the world, spending about 25 days in the air spread over five months.
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