Tuesday 5 February 2019

Flight to Australia With Her Open Biplane





Extreme air travel
A scheduled airline flight from the UK to Australia takes around 20 hours - the British pilot Tracey Curtis-Taylor has taken a little more time.  On October 1, 2015, she departed from Farnborough, England, flying in the "Spirit of Artemis", arriving in Sydney Australia on  January 9, 2016.

After three months alone in the air and in the open cockpit of a biplane from 1942, the adventurer, who grew up in Canada, had arrived in Australia.

It was a journey halfway around the world, a British pilot has landed in Sydney with her historic plane - after 21,000 kilometers. Her first words at the destination: "I need a drink."

In October, the 53-year-old took off from Farnborough near London.  About 21,000 kilometers and about 50 refueling stops later she landed her Boeing Stearman "Spirit of Artemis" in Sydney on Saturday.  "The end of a tremendous adventure," she wrote.

"I need a drink," she said after landing. "Flying was sensational - and that's why you do it," said Curtis-Taylor.  "Flying such an airplane at low altitude around half the world and seeing the most impressive landscapes - the geology, the vegetation - is the best view of the world, the best adventure in the world.  The journey took her through Eastern Europe, Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, India, Burma, Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
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Following the Footsteps of Other Female British Aviation Pioneers
Amy Johnson was the first woman to fly from Great Britain to Australia in 1930.  Curtis-Taylor had said before the start that such performances had impressed her all her life.
It took her 30 years to realize her dream of a solo trip to Australia.  By 2013 she had flown almost 13,000 kilometers from Cape Town in South Africa to England alone, as pilot Mary Heath had demonstrated in 1928.

Tracey Curtis-Taylor is a British aviator who has organized and piloted multiple flight expeditions with historic aircraft across Asia, Europe, Africa, Australia, and America.


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