GENEVA (Reuters) - Round-the-world balloonists Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones returned to Switzerland on Monday to trumpet fanfares from wellwishers gathered on the tarmac at Geneva airport in pouring rain. Hundreds of people were allowed to greet them in person when their aircraft touched down after a flight from Egypt, where they landed their Breitling Orbiter 3 balloon on Sunday after an odyssey of 42,810 km (26,755 miles). Piccard, a 42-year-old Swiss psychiatrist, and Jones, 51, a former British air force pilot, both still wore the beards they had grown during the voyage, which lasted 19 days, one hour and 49 minutes. They took off on March 1 on what, for Piccard, was the third attempt to fly round the world non-stop in a hot air balloon from the western Swiss Alpine resort of Chateau d‘Oex. But the control centre for their mission operated from Geneva‘s Cointrin international airport.