A propeller aircraft took to the air while powered by nothing more than commercial dry-cell batteries this past July. The flight was the fruit of a joint project by Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. and undergraduates at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. The group successfully completed a test flight in which the plane stayed airborne for 59 seconds and traveled 391 meters, exceeding by more than 100 meters the distance flown by the Wright brothers in the world's first manned flight in 1903.

Fuel-less Flight
A team of students from Tokyo Institute of Technology with experience participating in human-powered flight machine contests created the propeller aircraft, which has a wingspan of 31 meters. Their design called for an extremely light body, and the plane weighs in at just 54 kilograms, including batteries. The test flight took place in July at Okegawa Airport in Saitama Prefecture in the presence of official Japan Aeronautic Association observers...

Wow! The Japanese sure are good inventors. Hopefullly this fuel-less flight can one day lead fuel-less, or at least some type of hybird, commerical airliners!

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