Rotax’s 9-series engines have propelled several aircraft in round-the-world flights. One major user of the Austrian powerplants is The Airplane Factory in South Africa. They’ve done so many circumnavigations of the planet, you could be excused for losing count.
However, very long flights in an open cockpit airplane are rare. The very first such involved four open cockpit Douglas World Cruiser aircraft, which Donald Douglas modified from his DT-2 torpedo bomber.
In April 1924, eight U.S. Army Air Service pilots and mechanics in four airplanes left Seattle, Washington, to carry out the first circumnavigation of the globe by air. Only one completed the