http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_i...6a6a20060211ah
London - US aviator Steve Fossett was on the last half of his solo bid to set a new global benchmark for the longest flight as he piloted his Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer over the Pacific Ocean on Friday towards North America.
The 61-year-old adventurer set off Wednesday from NASA's Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and has so far crossed the Atlantic Ocean, north Africa, Saudi Arabia, the Arabian Gulf, and most of the Pacific.
"Next sighting of land will be Baja Peninsula" in Mexico, according to his website, wwww.virginatlanticglobalflyer.com.
At 01h00 GMT, "Steve Fossett passed the halfway point over Japan and is now heading over the Pacific towards the Baja Peninsula," his website said.
"Everything's going well at the moment," a spokeswoman at mission control in southeast England told AFP. "But there's a challenging time ahead because obviously as he gets towards the coast of the US, the jet streams are going to change."
At 12h30 GMT, Fossett was flying at 444 kilometres per hour and at an altitude of 13 915 metres, according to his website.
The 41 978-kilometre flight, which could take about 80 hours to complete, involves a circumnavigation of the globe plus a second Atlantic crossing to finish in Kent, southeast England.
Richard Branson, the billionaire British entrepreneur and founder of Virgin Atlantic airlines who is backing Fossett's bid, was optimistic, and has put his friend's record-breaking chances at "50/50".
"In recent hours the jet stream has been, and continues to be, very good which is aiding Steve's progress," said Branson in a statement late Thursday.
"But as Steve and I both know from our balloon trip we were together on (a failed attempt to circumnavigate the world non-stop in 1998), it completely dies away after Hawaii."
"This will be a critical decision point in the record attempt as he will have eight hours with no alternate landing points when he reaches this point.
"Mission control will have to do some recalculations of the jet streams and route to ensure it makes sense to continue," he said.
The flight is the second attempt at the longest flight record for Fossett, who has already set records in sailboats, gliders and hot air balloons.
Last March, he landed in Kansas after flying around the globe solo for 67 hours, two minutes and 38 seconds without stopping or refuelling in a trip spanning 36 989 kilometres.
If successful, he will fly 1 126 kilometres further than the 1999 around-the-world balloon trip by Brian Jones, a Briton, and his Swiss partner Bertrand Piccard on the Breitling Orbiter III.
Fossett will also beat the distance record set by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager in their nine-day, non-stop trip around the world without refuelling aboard the Voyager aircraft in 1986. That trip logged a total of 40,212 kilometres.
The Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer was designed by aviation pioneer Burt Rutan, creator of SpaceShipOne, the first private manned rocketship to go into space in 2004. Rutan also designed the Voyager flown by his brother Dick in 1986.
Measuring 13,4 metres long with a wingspan of 34,7 metres, it weighs 9,98 tons, including eight tonnes of fuel. The cockpit is equipped with an alert system to rouse the pilot if he falls asleep. - Sapa-AFP