Duval beats Airbus to electric cross-channel title

French pilot, Hugues Duval, stuntman’s battery-powered aircraft beat Airbus’s attempt to be first to fly an Electric plane across the English Channel, 106 years after Louis Bleriot made his pioneering flight, taking 21 minute to fly across the water.

Duval, owner of a small Brittany based aviation company called  Yankee Delta, said he decided to take-off from another aircraft his one man Cri Cri plane, to keep his attempt across the channel a secret.

Mr Duval admitted his  flight was a  quite different to the one planned  for months by Mr Esteyne and Airbus, the maker of his electric aircraft. However, Esteyne said ” We are building a part of the future of  aviation which highlights  how electric aircraft could  be instrumental in turning aviation into an environmentally friendly mode of travel”.The age of Jet engines on the world;s fleet of passenger aircraft are numbered as they polluted 2 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, as well as  big source of noise and air pollution.