Tag Archives: Pilot License

6 April 1927

Aviation, ,
William MacCracken’s Pilot Identification Card
United States of America Pilot License No. 1

6 April 1927: William Patterson MacCracken, Jr., Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aeronautics, became the first person to be issued a pilot’s license by the government of the United States. License Number 1 was a private license, signed by then Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, who would later become the 31st President of the United States of America.

Assistant Secretary MacCracken had offered the first pilot certificate to aviation pioneer Orville Wright, but Wright declined, as “he no longer flew and did not think he needed a Federal license to show that he had been the first man to fly.”

© 2018, Bryan R. Swopes

8 March 1910

Aviation, , , , , ,
Royal Aero club license issued to J.T.C. Moor-Brabazon, 8 March 1910. (RAF Museum)
Royal Aero Club License No. 1, issued to J.T.C. Moore-Brabazon, 8 March 1910. (RAF Museum)

8 March 1910: John Theodore Cuthbert Moore-Brabazon (later, the 1st Baron Brabazon of Tara, G.B.E., M.C., P.C.) was the first airplane pilot to be issued an aviator’s certificate by the Royal Aero Club of the United Kingdom. He had previously been assigned certificate number 40 of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale. He was issued Certificate Number 1 in England.

© 2019, Bryan R. Swopes

17 August 1932

Aviation, , , , ,
Jacqueline Cochran at Roosevelt Field, Long Island, New York, 1932. The airplane is a Fleet Model 2. (Cradle of Aviation Museum)

17 August 1932: For just over three weeks in the summer of 1932—23 July to 17 August—Jackie Cochran, a beautician who worked for Antoine’s salons at Saks Fifth Avenue in New York City and Miami, Florida, took flying lessons from Lester Travis (“Husky”) Flewellin, chief instructor at the Roosevelt Flying School at Roosevelt Field on Long Island, New York.

She made her first solo flight on 1 August, and that flight came to an abrupt end when the airplane’s engine stopped. Jackie successfully completed her first forced landing. After passing written and flight tests for the Department of Commerce, Jaqueline Cochran was issued a private pilot’s license, No. 1498.

A Roosevelt Aviation School Fleet Model 2 in the Cradle of Aviation Museum. (Ad Meskens/Wikipedia)

© 2021, Bryan R. Swopes

12 June 1918

Aviation, , , , ,
Aviator’s Certificate No. 1702, Aero Club of America. (NASM)

12 June 1918: 2nd Lieutenant James Harold Doolittle, Aviation Section, Signal Officers’ Reserve Corps, was granted Aero Club of America pilot certificate No. 1702 on behalf of the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.

The license was signed by Alan Ramsay Hawley, President, and William Hawley, Secretary.

Blue, leather-bound book containing James H. Doolittle’s Aero Club of America Aviator’s Certificate. (NASM)

© 2017, Bryan R. Swopes