The Queen Of Flight

Indefatigable, and tireless, quite obviously.  Even more obvious, enthusiastic and eager to share her talents and her love of flying with any who came to her to take advantage of her knowledge and experience as a flight instructor.  This was a woman who knew what she liked and was determined to live the way it pleased her to.  She passed well beyond elderly by the time she died at age 103 in Tennessee.

She outlived two husbands and was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame at Dayton, Ohio.  She became the manager of a small airport at Morristown, Tennessee in 1953.  And there, over a fifty-year time-span she busied herself among other absorbing and enjoyable duties teaching roughly five thousand student pilots, and certifying over 9,000 pilots for the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration.

Evelyn Johnson, who has died aged 102, was an aviatrix known as “Mama Bird” who made it into the Guinness Book of Records as having the most flying hours of any woman and the most of any living person. Evelyn Johnson Photo: AP

And if that wasn't in and of itself distinguishing enough for the record books, she became the oldest flight instructor in the world, teaching others to fly until she reached the age of 96.  She learned to fly herself, in 1944.  And over the years she logged 57,635.4 flying hours throughout her sixty years as a pilot; roughly equidistant to flying 12 times to the moon and back.

For two decades she operated a flying service, taking cargo, passengers and sightseers in trips around the United States.  She experienced two complete engine failures, but managed always to keep her aircraft aloft without a crash.  Her flying-hours record is distinguished as the greatest number of flying hours attributed to any living person.

But there was another individual, Ed Long, who managed to fly a greater number of hours, over 64,000.  Before his death in 1999, his last words were reputed to have been : "Don't let that woman beat me".  As luck would have it, she tried but didn't quite manage to surpass Mr. Long's exceptional flying record.  Glaucoma took its toll, and a car accident that resulted in one of her legs being amputated complicated the issue.

Even as she was forced by such circumstances to give up flying, she continued to manage the airport at Morristown until she reached the age of 101.  Amazing woman that she was.