Re the Air League:
From the outset we in the Air League knew it was not a solo flight and that point was clearly made when we made our award in May this year."
Did they now?
Odd then, that the article in their
July/August 2016 Newsletter article referred only to "Tracey Curtis-Taylor who had just completed an epic flight in her Boeing Stearman open cockpit bi-plane from Farnborough to Sydney in Australia, to pay tribute to Amy Johnson’s flight
in 1929" and not to Tracey Curtis-Taylor and Ewald Gritsch.
They certainly appeared to be under the impression that the earlier flight from Cape Town to Goodwood was solo.
From the
July/August 2014 Air League Newsletter article “2014 Air League Annual Reception Celebrates Excellence”:
The evening also recognised a number of personalities who had made outstanding contributions to aviation beginning with Norman Barber for his major contribution to the aerospace industry, Rescue Global for providing exceptional support to the Philippines famine relief effort, Angela Coleman for her fundraising on behalf of the Air League and her work within the Aviation Club, and Tracey Curtis-Taylor for flying a Boeing Steerman from Cape Town to Goodwood to emulate the flight in 1926 by Lady Mary Heath.
The Concise Oxford Dictionary gives the following for emulate:1. Try to equal or excel. 2 imitate zealously. 3 rival. It would, I think, be reasonable to assume that any flight emulating a historic solo flight would also be solo unless specifically indicated otherwise. Or alternatively, why was the recognition not to Tracey Curtis-Taylor and Ewald Gritsch for flying a Boeing Steerman from Cape Town to Goodwood to emulate the flight in 1926 by Lady Mary Heath if they knew it was not solo.
And leaving no room for misinterpretation as to their view of the first flight, from the
September/October 2015 Air League Newsletter front page article "Reliving the Dream":
Many readers will have seen a nationally broadcast BBC television documentary, entitled The Aviatrix, in March reporting the challenge-filled journey of aviation adventurer, Tracy Curtis-Taylor, during a multi-stage flight from Cape Town to Goodwood in 2013, in her 1942 Boeing Stearman two-seat trainer. This followed, as closely as was practical, the route taken in 1928 by Lady Mary Heath, the first woman pilot to hold a commercial flying licence in Great Britain and the first to fly in a small open cockpit aircraft from the Cape to London. During the RIAT air show in July, Tracy, who is an Air League award winner and an enthusiastic supporter of aviation opportunities aimed at young people, service charities and specialist groups through an outreach programme, told the editor of her plans to follow up her epic journey with an even more demanding goal of flying 13,000 miles eastwards from the UK to Australia, to follow the path flown in 1930 by Amy Johnson. Despite an aircraft taxiing accident at Goodwood recently, she is confident that she will still be able to achieve a departure in October, as planned, with the aim of reaching Sydney early in 2016.
Her main sponsors are Boeing Aerospace and Artemis Investment Management, and as with her previous long-range solo flight, the UK-Australia journey will be accompanied by a support team travelling in a more modern light aircraft to record the journey and provide back-up if needed....