British adventurer Tracey Curtis-Taylor is retracing pilot Amy Johnson’s pioneering 13,000 mile flight from England to Australia in a biplane.
When Pilot caught up with Curtis-Taylor last year she assured us that although she had a busy summer of flying in the UK ahead of her, she was ‘already planning another adventure’. The adventure that she had planned was to follow the route flown by pioneering female pilot Amy Johnson from England to Australia.
Tracey departed from Farnborough, Hampshire in October last year and reached Darwin, Australia on 1 January. She has spent a total of twenty days flying her open-cockpit 1942 Boeing Stearman aircraft. Speaking about the flight she stated, “Being able to fly a plane like this, at low level, halfway round the world in some of the most epic terrain on the planet has been beyond anything. My flight is very much a tribute to Johnson so it is celebrating what the pioneers achieved and what women achieve now in aviation as well”.
Following the route of Johnson’s 1930s solo flight, Curtis-Taylor crossed 23 countries and had up to fifty refuelling stops. Updating her Twitter account along the way, she has landed in Uluru and plans to push on to Sydney to finish.
