DHAKA: The zero-fuel aeroplane, Solar Impulse, has landed in the southern Spanish city of Seville to complete its historic Atlantic crossing.

Pilot Bertrand Piccard made swift progress over the ocean after leaving New York on Monday.

The flight was the 15th stage in Solar Impulse’s bid to circumnavigate the globe.

Mission managers will now plot a route to Abu Dhabi where the venture began in March, 2015.

The project had hoped to end the Atlantic leg in Paris, to echo the pioneering flight in 1927 of Charles Lindbergh.

Lindbergh’s Spirit of St Louis aircraft was the first to make the solo crossing.

As it turned out, the forecast this week in Paris was for storms, and so Seville was therefore chosen as the safest option, the BBC’s science correspondent, Jonathan Amos, reports.

Solar Impulse has moved rapidly around the Earth since renewing its challenge in Hawaii on 21 April.

In 2015, the plane flew eight stages from Abu Dhabi to Kalaeloa, including a remarkable four-day, 21-hour leg over the western Pacific - the longest solo flight in aviation history in terms of the time it took.

But it was damage to its batteries on that stage that forced Solar Impulse to then lay up for 10 months, for repairs and to wait for optimum daylight length in the northern hemisphere to return.

BDST: 1305 HRS, JUN 23, 2016
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