A British aviator has touched down in Sydney, completing her 21,000km solo flight from England in a vintage open cockpit biplane.
“I need a drink. And I need a hairdresser,” Tracey Curtis-Taylor said as she climbed out of her 1942 Boeing Stearman, Spirit of Artemis, to cheers and applause at Sydney airport on Saturday.
The 53-year-old pilot has flown across 23 countries, making 50 refuelling stops, since she set off from Farnborough in Hampshire, southern England, in October.
Her mission was to emulate the pioneering British aviator Amy Johnson, who became the first woman to fly solo from Britain to Australia in 1930.
Curtis-Taylor’s route took her across Europe and the Mediterranean to Jordan, over the Arabian desert, across the Gulf of Oman to Pakistan, India and across Asia.
Encountering treacherous weather and navigating the politics of the airways were the toughest parts of the trip, she said.
https://www.theguardian.com/australi...intage-biplane
She said of one leg near Bucharest: “Flying in heavy rain, low cloud on the deck … that was a death trap that killed a lot of the airline pilots. So I turned around and went back.”