Fighting through sleep deprivation, severe turbulence and a last-gasp emergency landing, Steve Fossett broke the record for the longest non-stop flight in aviation history.

The 61-year-old adventurer piloted his lightweight experimental plane, Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer, to set a record of 26,389 miles in about 76 hours despite a complete electronic failure that threatened to turn his return into a nightmare.

Fossett put emergency landing procedures into action when a generator light started to flash upon his descent.

The mechanical crisis forced him to land Saturday at Bournemouth International Airport, in southern England, instead of his planned landing point in nearby Kent, where hundreds of well-wishers were gathered to greet him.

"He burst two tires on landing, and the poor GlobalFlyer had to be dragged off the runway," said Steve Ridgeway, chief executive of Virgin Atlantic, the company sponsoring Fossett's record bid.

Ground control confirmed Fossett had broken the distance record of 24,987 miles as his plane flew over Shannon, Ireland, his ground team said. That eclipsed the 1986 record set by the lightweight Voyager aircraft, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager. It also beats the balloon record of 25,361 miles set in 1999.

Fossett, a Chicago adventurer who took off Wednesday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, holds the record for flying solo around the globe in a balloon and for being the first person to circle the globe solo in a plane without stopping or refueling. That flight last year lasted 67 hours and was hampered by a fuel leak.