The Globe and Mail: Biplane lands after historic transatlantic flight

Speaking of Steve Fossett (previous post), he and Mark Rebholz have landed today in Ireland (on a golf course, if I understand this story correctly). They left Newfoundland last night at 7 p.m. local time, and were more or less setting out to recreate John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown's pioneering 1919 voyage across the Atlantic.

Fossett and Rebholz were flying a Vickers Vimy replica biplane.

UPDATE: The Herald Sun reports:

MILLIONAIRE adventurer Steve Fossett and his co-pilot landed safely in western Ireland today after re-enacting the first trans-Atlantic flight made more than 80 years ago.

Mr Fossett and co-pilot Mark Rebholz had left Newfoundland in a replica of the Vickers Vimy aircraft used by British pilots John Alcock and Arthur Brown to cross the Atlantic in 1919.

The wooden biplane touched down in Clifden, County Galway, this morning.

Adhering to the spirit of the original flight, the pair flew without satellite or lights and navigated by the stars and the moon.

Spokeswoman Rosemary Dawson said they were overwhelmed by the experience.

"They were speechless ... they could barely walk, their legs were like jelly," she said on Irish state radio...

UPDATE: For information on the 1919 flight, see here.

UPDATE: The Toronto Star article begins:

CLIFDEN, Ireland (AP-CP) — Commemorating the first trans-Atlantic flight 86 years ago, adventurer Steve Fossett and his co-pilot successfully flew an old-world biplane across the Atlantic and landed Sunday on an Irish golf course to the cheers of 2,000 onlookers.

Fossett and antique airplane enthusiast Mark Rebholz, who jointly operated a custom-built replica Vickers Vimy, wanted to honour and emulate the June 1919 achievement of British pilots John Alcock and Arthur Whitten-Brown.

Both air crews flew from St. John's, Newfoundland to Clifden in western Ireland using compasses and sextants for navigation. While Alcock and Whitten-Brown managed the feat in 16 hours, 20 minutes, Fossett and Rebholz took about 45 minutes longer. And while the British pioneers crash-landed in a bog, their American successors landed smoothly on a local golf course.

"They did an absolutely textbook landing; it was very pretty," Jennifer Moseley, a spokeswoman for the pilots who has been involved in the project for five years, said in an interview with the Canadian Press...