Volta
Exploration17 – 18 June 1928

The Friendship Flight across the Atlantic

Earhart flew from Newfoundland to Wales in the seaplane Friendship, becoming the first woman to cross the Atlantic by air — though the men did the flying.

Earhart climbing the harbour wall at Burry Port, Wales (18 June 1928)
Earhart climbing the harbour wall at Burry Port, Wales (18 June 1928)

Topeuph · CC0 · Source

In 1928, the year after Lindbergh’s solo crossing, backers looking for the first woman to fly the Atlantic chose Earhart, a Boston social worker and pilot. On 17 June she left Trepassey, Newfoundland, in the three-engined seaplane Friendship with pilot Wilmer Stultz and mechanic Louis Gordon, and 20 hours 40 minutes later they came down off Burry Port in Wales.

She never touched the controls — “I was just baggage, like a sack of potatoes,” she said — but New York gave her a ticker-tape parade and she was famous overnight. Through the flight she met the publisher George Putnam, whom she married in 1931.

Show on the map

The map in 1928

Open the full map

OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles © OpenStreetMap contributors

States and rulers at the time
United States — President Calvin Coolidge
Great Britain · destination
Places
Burry Port, Wales

People

  • Amelia Earhart1897 – 1937

    participant · American aviator, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic (1932), who vanished over the Pacific in 1937 while flying around the world near the equator

Before and after

Earlier
1925 Locarno Treaties
Later
1928 Kellogg–Briand Pact

Themes that include this event

  • Amelia Earhart1897 – 1937

    From her first ride in an aeroplane to the first solo Atlantic flight by a woman and her disappearance over the Pacific on a flight around the world — the life of an aviator who widened the paths of the sky