Thanks for your earlier heads-up re the website developments,
Cessnafly.
So, in a
statement dated 11 June 2016, a year after
Sam Rutherford first disclosed to PPRuNe that most of her Cape Town-to-Goodwood sectors were not flown solo, and a few weeks after she and Mr Gritsch emerged from the wreckage in Arizona, Ms Curtis-Taylor wrote:
"I am deeply disappointed at the comments coming from a particular source making false assertions that my flight expeditions should have been executed as solo flights.
They were not."
The last sentence is open to interpretation, perhaps deliberately, but I infer that it means that neither were her flight expeditions solo, nor was there any requirement for them to be solo. On the latter point, she - as the instigator of these journeys - was free to decide whether she would attempt to fly them solo.
There seems to be ample evidence that after the Cape Town-to-Goodwood trip she claimed to have completed it solo. Before departing Farnborough for Australia in October 2015 she told the world by implication, if not specifically, that the trip would be flown solo to emulate Amy Johnson's. On her arrival in Darwin on 1st January, her website still included the following claim:
"...following in the slipstream of aviator Amy Johnson to recreate her pioneering solo flight from Great Britain to Australia."
No wonder that the world's media took her at her word and credited her with an all-solo journey. No wonder, in the light of some photographs of her in flight suggesting otherwise, that the curiosity of her fellow pilots, many of whom know only too well the difference between flying cross-country alone and flying with a co-pilot, led to many searching questions being asked and various sceptical comments being made.
But the lady appears to have been unaware or in denial of the controversy. Neither she nor her not-inconsiderable support team made any attempt to address it, or - most significantly - correct the misleading reports. She personally had many opportunities, including an interview with the BBC for Radio 4's flagship news and current-affairs programme,
Today, on January 9. Following that interview the programme's website stated:
"British aviation adventurer, Tracey Curtis-Taylor has completed a 13,000 mile solo flight from Britain to Australia in a vintage open cockpit biplane. The 53 year-old set off from Hampshire in October. She has emulated the pioneering British aviator, Amy Johnson, who became the first woman to fly solo between the two countries in 1930."
As I commented on
PPRuNe's AH&N forum on January 9th:
"The problem for the team now is that the advantages of encouraging - or at least allowing - the media to report this as a solo flight might be more than outweighed by the negative effects of any [future] admission to the contrary. And the solo description lingers on."
So it is proving, unfortunately.