Women in Aviation : Timeline
March 10,2023
1784 – Elisabeth Thible becomes the first woman to fly — in a hot air balloon
1798 – Jeanne Labrosse is the first woman to solo in a balloon
1809 – Marie Madeleine Sophie Blanchard becomes the first woman to lose her life while flying – she was watching fireworks in her hydrogen balloon
1851 – “Mademoiselle Delon” ascends in a balloon in Philadelphia
1880 – July 4 – Mary Myers is the first American woman to solo in a balloon
1903 – Aida de Acosta is the first woman to solo in a dirigible (a motorized aircraft)
1906 – E. Lillian Todd is the first woman to design and build an airplane, though it never flew
1908 – Madame Therese Peltier is the first woman to fly an airplane solo
1908 – Edith Berg is the first woman airplane passenger (she was a European business manager for the Wright Brothers)
1910 – Baroness Raymonde de la Roche obtains a license from the Aero Club of France, the first woman in the world to earn a pilot’s license
1910 – September 2 – Blanche Stuart Scott, without permission or knowledge of Glenn Curtiss, the airplane’s owner and builder, removes a small wood wedge and is able to get the airplane airborne — without any flying lessons — thus becoming the first American woman to pilot an airplane
1910 – October 13 – Bessica Raiche’s flight qualifies her, for some, as the first woman pilot in America because some discount the flight of Scott as accidental and therefore deny her this credit
1911 – August 11 – Harriet Quimby becomes the first American woman licensed pilot, with flight license number 37 from the Aero Club of America
1911 – September 4 – Harriet Quimby becomes the first woman to fly at night
1912 – April 16 – Harriet Quimby becomes the first woman to pilot her own aircraft across the English Channel
1913 – Alys McKey Bryant is the first woman pilot in Canada
1916 – Ruth Law sets two American records flying from Chicago to New York
1918 – The US postmaster general approves the appointment of Marjorie Stinson as the first female airmail pilot
1919 – Harriette Harmon becomes the first female ever to fly from Washington D.C. to New York City as a passenger.
1919 – Baroness Raymonde de la Roche, who in 1910 was the first woman to earn a pilot’s license, set an altitude record for women of 4,785 meters or 15,700 feet
1919 – Ruth Law becomes the first person to fly air mail in the Philippines
1921 – Adrienne Bolland is the first woman to fly over the Andes
1921 – Bessie Coleman becomes the first African American, male or female, to earn a pilot’s license
1922 – Lillian Gatlin is the first woman to fly across America as a passenger
1928 – June 17 – Amelia Earhart is the first woman to fly across the Atlantic — Lou Gordon and Wilmer Stultz did most of the flying
1929 – August – first Women’s Air Derby is held, and Louise Thaden wins, Gladys O’Donnell takes second place and Amelia Earhart takes third
1929 – Florence Lowe Barnes – Pancho Barnes – becomes the first woman stunt pilot in motion pictures (in “Hell’s Angels”)
1929 – Amelia Earhart becomes the first president of the Ninety-Nines, an organization of women pilots
1930 – May 5-24 – Amy Johnson becomes the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia
1930 – Anne Morrow Lindbergh becomes the first woman to earn a glider pilot license
1931 – Ruth Nichols fails in her attempt to fly solo across the Atlantic, but she breaks the world distance record flying from California to Kentucky
1931 – Katherine Cheung becomes the first woman of Chinese ancestry to earn a pilot’s license
1932 – May 20-21 – Amelia Earhart is the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic
1932 – Ruthy Tu becomes the first woman pilot in the Chinese Army
1934 – Helen Richey becomes the first woman pilot hired by a regularly scheduled airline, Central Airlines
1934 – Jean Batten is the first woman to fly round trip England to Australia
1935 – January 11-23 – Amelia Earhart is the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to the American mainland
1936 – Beryl Markham becomes the first woman to fly across the Atlantic east to west
1936 – Louise Thaden and Blanche Noyes beat male pilots also entered in the Bendix Trophy Race, the first victory of women over men in a race which both men and women could enter
1937 – July 2 – Amelia Earhart lost over Pacific
1937 – Hanna Reitsch was the first woman to cross the Alps in a glider
1938 – Hanna Reitsch becomes the first woman to fly a helicopter and the first woman to be licensed as a helicopter pilot
1939 – Willa Brown, first African American commercial pilot and first African American woman officer in the Civil Air Patrol, helps form the National Airmen’s Association of America to help open up the U.S. Armed Forces to African American men
1939 – January 5 – Amelia Earhart declared legally dead
1939 – September 15 – Jacqueline Cochran sets an international speed record; the same year, she is the first woman to make a blind landing
1941 – July 1 – Jacqueline Cochrane is the first woman to ferry a bomber across the Atlantic
1941 – Marina Raskova appointed by Soviet Union high command to organize regiments of women pilots, one of which is later called the Night Witches
1942 – Nancy Harkness Love and Jackie Cochran organize women flying units and training detachments
1943 – Women make up more than 30% of the workforce in the aviation industry
1943 – Love’s and Cochran’s units are merged into the Women Airforce Service Pilots and Jackie Cochran becomes the Director of Women Pilots — those in WASP flew more than 60 million miles before the program ended in December 1944, with only 38 lives lost of 1830 volunteers and 1074 graduates — these pilots were seen as civilians and were only recognized as military personnel in 1977
1944 – German pilot Hanna Reitsch was the first woman to pilot a jet aircraft
1944 – WASP (Women Airforce Service Pilots) disbanded; the women were given no benefits for their service
1945 – Melitta Schiller is awarded the Iron Cross and Military Flight Badge in Germany
1945 – Valérie André of the French Army in Indochina, a neurosurgeon, was the first woman to fly a helicopter in combat
1949 – Richarda Morrow-Tait landed in Croydon, England, after her round-the-world flight, with navigator Michael Townsend, the first such flight for a woman — it took one year and one day with a 7 week stop in India to replace the plane’s engine and 8 months in Alaska to raise funds to replace her plane
1953 – Jacqueline (Jackie) Cochran becomes the first woman to break the sound barrier
1964 – March 19 – Geraldine (Jerrie) Mock of Columbus, Ohio, is the first woman to pilot a plane solo around the world (“The Spirit of Columbus,” a single-engine plane)
1973 – January 29 – Emily Howell Warner is the first woman working as a pilot for a commercial airline (Frontier Airlines)
1973 – U.S. Navy announces pilot training for women
1974 – Mary Barr becomes the first woman pilot with the Forest Service
1974 – June 4 – Sally Murphy is the first woman to qualify as an aviator with the U.S. Army
1977 – November – Congress passes a bill recognizing WASP pilots of World War II as military personnel, and President Jimmy Carter signs the bill into law
1978 – International Society of Women Airline pilots formed
1980 – Lynn Rippelmeyer becomes the first woman to pilot a Boeing 747
1984 – on July 18, Beverly Burns becomes the first woman to captain a 747 cross country, and Lynn Rippelmeyer becomes the first woman to captain a 747 across the Atlantic — sharing the honor, thereby, of being the first female 747 captains
1987 – Kamin Bell became the first African American woman Navy helicopter pilot (February 13)
1994 – Vicki Van Meter is the youngest pilot (to that date) to fly across the Atlantic in a Cessna 210 – she is 12 years old at the time of the flight
1994 – April 21 – Jackie Parker becomes the first woman to qualify to fly an F-16 combat plane
2001 – Polly Vacher becomes the first woman to fly around the world in a small plane – she flies from England to England on a route that includes Australia
2012 – Women who flew as part of WASP in World War II (Women Airforce Service Pilots) are given the Congressional Gold Medal in the United States, with over 250 women attending
2012 – Liu Yang becomes the first woman launched by China into space.
2016 – Wang Zheng (Julie Wang) is the first person from China to fly a single-engine plane around the world
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