Fossett completes flight of fancy

The American tycoon and his co-pilot, Mark Rebholz, landed their open-cockpit biplane on the eighth hole of the Connemara golf links at Clifden in the Irish Republic, ending a 1,875-mile crossing first made 86 years ago by the Glaswegian flyer Arthur Whitten Brown and fellow Briton John Alcock.

A spokeswoman, Rosemary Dawson, said the pair were overwhelmed by the experience. "They were speechless ... they could barely walk, their legs were like jelly," she said.

Mr Fossett and Mr Rebholz's flight from Newfoundland in Canada was the last in a trilogy re-enacting the epic journeys made by the Vickers Vimy aircraft during the early 20th century that helped to sell the idea of commercial long-haul aviation to a sceptical world.

Over the past 12 years, the wood and canvas replica has flown more than 40,000 miles and touched down in 35 countries, re-enacting the first London to Australia flight of 1919 and the first London to Cape Town passage of 1920.

Construction of the copy took 25,000 hours of labour and required thousands of pages of new drawings. The team used 3,000ft of wood, 4,130 steel tubes, 1,500ft of cotton thread and 10,000 knots.

The story of Alcock and Brown's transatlantic feat in 1919 was one of scientific brilliance and human bravery, yet their place in history is perhaps not as well known as it should be.

Many people wrongly believe that Charles Lindbergh, an American aviator, was the first to fly the Atlantic, but his was the first solo crossing, taking place eight years after the Vimy's two-man mission.

Alcock and Brown endured thick fog, forcing them to fly just 300ft above the waves at times, and for four hours their aircraft was covered in a sheet of ice caused by frozen sleet.

They landed five miles east of Clifden in a bog, with Alcock declaring: "Yesterday I was in America - and I am the first man in Europe to say that."