He's set 62 world records, doing such things as flying around the world in a hot air balloon and transatlantic sailing. But becoming the first person to fly solo around the world without refueling is Steve Fossett's favourite accomplishment yet.

"I worked on it for such a long time, and it involved a lot of people. It's an airplane flight, and I want to be an accomplished pilot. So this is right up at the top as far as an achievement for me," Fossett told CTV's Canada AM Friday from Salina, Kansas.

It took the millionaire adventurer 67 hours to make the 37,000-kilometre trip around the world. He did it in the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer, a single-engine jet that's been called "a fuel tank with room for one." Its cockpit is two metres long and is equipped with 13 tanks that can carry nearly 2,500 kilograms of fuel.

Fossett, 60, says his two biggest challenges of the almost three-day journey were sleep deprivation and leg cramps.

"I had to stay at the flight controls for all that period of time and it was a very long time to be sitting there," Fossett says. "One time, I got leg cramps; I had to worry about moving the legs enough so I wouldn't get blood clots, for instance.

"I had a little trouble getting rid of the cramp, but after that, I had some leg cramp medication, I took that for the rest of the trip."

Staying awake also became difficult by the third day, Fossett. And flying at speeds of 648 kilometres an hour made it difficult to catch some shut-eye.

"I could take naps of one or three minutes," Fossett says. "I have an autopilot, but the airplane requires a continuous adjustment of the controls even while it's on autopilot. So I would set all the alarms so when I would go to sleep, if the speed or altitude diverged, I would get these alarms in my earphones to wake me up and I could make the necessary adjustments."

He ate as little as possible on the journey, knowing that he wouldn't need much.

"You know, it's less than three days, so I didn't care too much about what I was eating. I just wanted it to be low residue, because liquids are pretty easy to handle in the plane and that's why I chose diet milk shakes.

The success of Fossett's journey was put in doubt on Wednesday when he discovered a fuel-system. Fuel sensors on the plane differed from readings that indicated how quickly fuel was burning, forcing the crew to assume that close to 1,200 kilograms of the plane's original 8,200 kilograms of fuel had somehow "disappeared" early in the flight.

"It took us a while to figure out this huge discrepancy we had. Finally, we came to the conclusion it was the lower measurement of fuel is what I really had. It was very discouraging to think that here I was on a flight, the airplane was plying well, and I wouldn't likely enough fuel to complete the flight.

"The first possibility was that I would have to stop in Hong Kong. But when I realized I had at least enough to go to Hawaii, I continued that far. And then we had to make a real tough decision to make sure that I had enough fuel to make it back to the mainland United States."

To increase his chances of reaching the end, Fossett flew the final leg of his journey conservatively, flying slowly, helped along by a tail wind.
Fossett says he's immensely proud of what he was able to achieve.

"This was really a big win for me. This is something I've wanted to do for five years. It was a big project and it all came together. It's just a great satisfaction for finishing it off."