Solar flight across the Pacific

The long awaited news from Geneva published by most local dailies on the July 5 is indeed a great breakthrough in the history of solar powered flight. Both Borchberg and Piccard, the two committed pilots deserve due recognition and appreciation from the world aviation authorities and other countries for reducing air pollution by aircraft. This flight may pioneer environment pollution-free commercial flights in the decades to come.
The most appropriate all-weather solution, could be to have short-run multi-engined air craft, flying above the clouds, maybe, with four engines -- two solar powered and two turbo-prop engines -- one on each side of the aircraft fuselage. For take-offs and landings, the two turbo props will function. At higher altitudes, all the four engines can function using batteries that can be charged either by the turboprop engine power or from sunlight as and when available. The turbo prop engines on either side can have power take-off engine driven generators that charge the batteries for flying when sunlight is insufficient for charging. To begin with, we can have smaller aircraft for regional flights only. Later with more knowledge and experience, we can have larger and more powerful aircraft like today's four-engine jets using both traditional aviation kerosene and sunlight as alternative sources of fuel.
I think the day is not far off when aircraft designers and engine makers will come together to have these dual fuel-based new aircraft flying all across the world and thus reducing air pollution to a great extent.
Engr.S.A.Mansoor
Dhaka.