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| “Gérard closes the circle landing in Rio de Janeiro” |
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 When he touched down on the tarmac at Jacarepaguá airport in Rio de Janeiro, on 28th September 2001 at 14:00, Gérard Moss was completing the first circumnavigation in a motor-glider.
For precisely 100 days, he had crossed the skies of the planet in a Super Ximango motor glider, built in Brazil by Aeromot in Porto Alegre. The journey had begun in Rio de Janeiro on 20th June.
Upon closing the circle, Gérard had flown 55.000 km and landed in 30 countries. The pioneer spirit of this journey had caused him various surprises. Near Japan, his flight was considered suspect as he was flying low to avoid bad weather, and was intercepted by F-15 fighter jets. In Vietnam, he was held in custody for landing at a domestic airport after he could not make it through the monsoon to land at Ho Chi Minh. He crossed Southeast Asia during the monsoons, tackling monstrous storms. Upon arriving in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia refused a flight clearance and he had to fly an additional 1,500 km to circumnavigate their airspace.
He flew half way round the world with the automatic pilot on the blink, increasing his weariness on the long legs. But nothing distracted him from his objective. To get back to Brazil, he took on the South Atlantic, the most risky stretch of the trip, leaving Cape Verde, on the African coast and spending over 12 hours over 2.315 km of ocean to reach Fernando de Noronha Island.
The Wings of the Wind project was sponsored by Embratel, Victorinox, Grupo Aeromot and Banco Santos.
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