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 In a further twist, a Slovenian businessman said he might have
beaten both of them earlier in the week if he hadn't been robbed of
his chance of glory.
In a contest that echoed the cloak-and-dagger rivalries of
aviation's early pioneers, it was Frenchman Hugues Duval, 35, who
emerged on top by secretly crossing the Channel in both directions
in his one-seater Cri-Cri, launched off the top of another plane on
Thursday evening.
"We crossed the Channel before Airbus. The only way I could do this
was to hide and do it with the utmost discretion," he told Reuters.
That came more than 12 hours before Didier Esteyne piloted an Airbus
E-Fan across the Channel from Lydd, in Kent, to land on French soil
in Calais on Friday, watched by dozens of journalists and VIPs.
The E-Fan flight took the opposite direction from Louis Bleriot's
first heavier-than-air crossing in 1909. Airbus's aim was to
highlight the promise of electric flight, which it says could
ultimately produce a 100-seat regional passenger plane.
 Airbus gamely conceded defeat to the Cri-Cri, with its chief
technology officer Jean Botti telling reporters, "It's not a victory
but a start...the start of a great innovation."
Privately, however, Airbus officials said Duval's tiny one-seater,
weighing just 70kg (154 lb) and built by a small team in Brittany,
was too small to be considered an airplane. They also grumbled at
the fact it had been catapulted by another plane.
Adding further intrigue, Slovenian entrepreneur Ivo Boscarol said
his own attempt to cross the Channel in a Pipistrel electric plane
even earlier in the week was thwarted when Germany's Siemens
abruptly took away its engine, saying it was not certified over
water.
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"History is always about who is first and nobody is interested in
the second or third," Boscarol told Reuters. "That is it and life
must go on."
Siemens said it had only acted out of concerns for safety and denied
any link between the decision and its role in helping to verify the
design of the Airbus E-Fan's twin engines.
Boscarol said he would continue to work with the German company,
noting that the research could bring serious business opportunities
including in the field of pilot training.
The contest in the skies above the Channel took place 75 years to
the day after the Battle of Britain, the epic air contest between
the British and German air forces in World War Two.
"The Channel, especially for French and English pilots, has a
special place on the pedestal like flights over the Atlantic. It has
a kind of religious prestige," Boscarol said.
(Additional reporting by Georgina Prodhan; Editing by Mark
Trevelyan)
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