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We’ve talked about the history of the airplane and how a few men gave their intelligent contributions to advance travel in the air. However, where do women fit into the picture of early aircraft travel? Well, one woman stands out as one of the most famous pilots of all time, and what makes this so great is that she was doing it during a time that women didn’t have many rights. They had just been given the right to vote in 1920, and by 1926, Amelia Earhart was flying planes and encouraging other women to do the same.

By the time Earhart was 23, she knew that she had to fly. She had been given the opportunity to sit in a biplane during an air show she went to with her father. From that moment on she dedicated the rest of her life to flight. She began flying and trying to break records for the next 6 years, and on April 27, 1926, she was asked by Captain H.H. Railey to be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic.

She took advantage of this amazing opportunity, however, she did not fly the plane herself. She merely accompanied two men in the plane. As exhilarating as it was, Earhart decided that she was ready to cross the Atlantic on a solo mission. By 1932, only one person had crossed the Atlantic successfully, Charles Lindbergh. But this did not deter Earhart, as she set out to accomplish this journey on May 20, 1932. And was she ever successful! She had broken several records on this flight: she was the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo and the only person to fly it twice, it was the longest non-stop distance flown by a woman, and she set a record for crossing it in the shortest time.

Her adventures did not stop here though. She then decided to fly from Hawaii to California and then on to Washington D.C. Again she succeeded and received praise from President Roosevelt who said, “You have scored again…and shown even the ‘doubting Thomases’ that aviation is a science which cannot be limited to men only.”

After all of her accomplishments, Earhart felt that she had one last flight in her before she retired her wings. This would be her greatest victory if completed. She decided to fly around the world. She set out on June 1, 1937 from Miami, Florida with her navigator, Fred Noonan. By June 29, they had traveled 22,000 miles and had only 7,000 left to go. But on July 2, her plane disappeared. Earhart and Noonan were very close to circumnavigating the globe, but as far as anyone knows, the plane went down somewhere off the coast of Howland Island. There has never been a trace of the two or the plane since. Regardless of the mystery of Amelia Earhart, she proved time and time again that women are capable of accomplishing the same feats as men. In a letter that she wrote during her last flight to her husband, she stated just that, “Please know I am quite aware of the hazards…I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others.”