View source for Previous around-the-world flights

[[Gillespie]]: TIME magazine saw [[AE|Earhart's]] world flight as an over-hyped publicity stunt.  What was different about it from the six previous aerial circumnavigations was that Earhart was aiming to be the first woman pilot to circle the globe.

"Between 1924 and 1933 the globe was girdled six times by aircraft. Last year, when Pan American Airways started carrying passengers across the Pacific, reporters Herbert Ekins and Leo Kieran circled the globe on commercial lines. Soon after, Pan American’s President Juan Terry Trippe and a party of friends also flew around on commercial lines. Last week, Aviatrix Amelia Earhart Putnam took off from Oakland “to establish the feasibility of circling the globe by commercial air travel” and “to determine just how human beings react under strain and fatigue” [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,757502,00.html (Mar. 29, 1937).]

{| class=wikitable border=1 cellpadding=5
|+ Previous successful expeditions
|-
! year
! aircraft
! crew
! distance
! time
|-
| 1924
| [http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Aerospace/Douglas_World_Trip/Aero27.htm Four Douglas DT-2 World Cruisers]
| Eight Army crewmen 
| 26,000 miles
| 175 days
|-
| 1929
| [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ_127_Graf_Zeppelin LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin]
| 
| 19,500 miles (beginning and ending in Lakehurst, NJ)
| 12 days and 11 minutes
|-
| 1930
| Fokker F7 (''Southern Cross'')
| [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Kingsford_Smith Charles E. Kingsford-Smith] & Charles P.T. Ulm
| ~25,000 miles
| 2 years 1 month 4 days
|-
| 1931
| Lockheed Vega (''Winnie Mae'')
| [http://www.acepilots.com/post.html Wiley Post] and [[Harold Gatty]]
| 15,474 miles
| 8 days, 15 hours, 51 minutes
|-
| 1931
| Bellanca "J-300 Long Distance Special" (''Miss Veedol'')
| [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clyde_Edward_Pangborn Clyde Edward Pangborn] & Hugh Herndon, Jr.
| 
| 
|-
| 1933
| Lockheed Vega (''Winnie Mae'')
| [http://www.acepilots.com/post.html Wiley Post,] solo (autopilot and RDF)
| 15,596 miles
| 7 days, 18 minutes
|}

== Links ==
* [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_aerial_circumnavigation First aerial circumnavigation.]
* [http://www.wingnet.org/rtw/ Round-the-World Flights.]
[[Category:Navigation]]