Another Lindbergh Crosses Atlantic
The clouds over Le Bourget airport in Paris lifted just a little, reports CBS News Correspondent Elaine Cobbe, as the New Spirit of St. Louis came in to land.
Erik Lindbergh arrived in France on Thursday after flying across the Atlantic Ocean to duplicate his grandfather's historic 1927 New York-to-Paris solo flight.
"I couldn't wait to get down and kiss the ground," he said on the CBS News Early Show.
He was immediately hugged by his mother Barbara, who said she was nervous for weeks before he took off, and breathed a sigh of relief only once he was over France.
His $289,000 aircraft, made of a glass and carbon composite, has an average cruise speed of 184 mph, compared with the 108 mph of the original Spirit of St. Louis, built for $10,580. The original flight occurred on May 20-21, 1927.
His grandfather's flight, the first nonstop solo run from New York to Paris, took 33½ hours. Erik took just 17 hours in a Lancair Columbia 300, landing at 11:30 a.m. local time (5:30 a.m. EDT).
Erik Lindbergh took off from Republic Airport on New York's Long Island at 12:15 p.m. EDT on Wednesday.
"For me, it was really pretty calm and pretty comfortable," he said.
"I had to go through several storms and had some tense moments flying above icing, below icing, rerouting my route to stay away from the thunderstorms," he told CBS News.
The single-engine plane uses a Global Positioning System navigation device to chart its exact location. In comparison, Charles Lindbergh used deduced reckoning — basically, "holding a compass and guessing at the wind," as his grandson has described it.
The flight was planned to raise awareness of rheumatoid arthritis, which disabled 37-year-old Erik Lindbergh for 15 years before drug treatment helped restore his mobility.
Organizers also hope the journey will promote the X Prize Foundation, a St. Louis-based nonprofit group that is offering $10 million to the first private group that can build and launch a manned spacecraft into space, then repeat the feat within two weeks.
"This flight was really meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of [my grandfather's] flight, not to try to duplicate it," Erik said.
In 1927, Charles Lindbergh brought along five sandwiches and ate only a bite. Erik brought six sandwiches along and ate one and a half. He joked, "I did it in half the time and ate twice as much."