Aviation career edit
At the age of 19, Bird obtained a commercial pilot’s license and purchased her first aircraft, a de Havilland Gipsy Moth, with funds borrowed from her father and a bequest of A£200 from a great aunt, which she later repaid. Bird soon embarked on a barnstorming tour with her friend Peggy McKillop, stopping at country fairs and giving joyrides to people who had never seen an aircraft before, much less a female pilot.
While touring, Bird met Reverend Stanley Drummond. In the outback of New South Wales, he wanted her to assist in setting up an aerial medical service. She was employed in 1935 to run what was then known as the Royal Far West Childrens Health Scheme. Birds own Gipsy Moth was used as an air ambulance. She purchased an improved aircraft and started flying over areas not yet serviced by the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia, including Queensland [2]. She told others that it was rewarding but lonely work.
Nancy Bird won the Ladies Trophy in an air race from Adelaide to Brisbane in 1936. She made the decision to take a lengthy break from flying in 1938. She accepted an invitation from a Dutch airline (KLM) to do some promotional work in Europe, and she spent a few years there. Soon after the start of World War II, she went back to Australia. She started teaching women the skills they would need to support the male pilots in the Royal Australian Air Force.
She established the Australian Women Pilots Association (AWPA) in 1950[1] and served as its president for five years. She made the decision to resume flying in 1958 following a more than two-decade break. After Lady Casey, the original Patron of the AWPA, passed away in 1983, Nancy-Bird Walton assumed the role. Walton bought Lady Casey’s Cessna 180, which Baron Casey had dubbed Lady Casey. [5].
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Nancy-Bird Walton, an Australian aviation pioneer, passed away at the age of 93 at her Sydney home.
Ms. Walton, who was named a Living National Treasure by the National Trust of Australia in 1997, passed away on Tuesday at Mosman, on Sydney’s north shore, at approximately 2:00 PM (AEDT) due to natural causes.
Nancy-Bird Walton during the introduction of her named Qantas A380
In 1933, Ms. Walton learned to fly at the age of seventeen under Charles Kingsford Smith.
She became the first Australian woman to obtain a commercial pilot’s license two years later.
Later, Ms. Walton established an air ambulance service for rural New South Wales.
She was present for the first Australian landing of Qantas’s first super passenger jet, the A380, which was dubbed the Nancy-Bird Walton in her honor, in October of last year.
“Three years ago, when I turned ninety, Qantas asked if they could name this plane after me. I decided to live,” she said at the Sydney ceremony.
She founded and served as president of the Australian Womens Pilot Association for a long time, and she was also the Emeritus Patron of the Royal Flying Doctor Service. She was also the Commandant of the Womens Air Training Corps from 1940 to 1945.
Ms. Walton received an OBE in 1966, was made a Dame of the Knights of Malta in 1977, and the Australian government granted her an AO in 1990. Advertisement.
Qantas paid tribute to Ms. Walton in a statement, describing her as an inspirational figure in Australian aviation and a trailblazer for women pilots.
Alan Joyce, CEO of Qantas, said, “We are so proud that our first A380 is named after Nancy-Bird and will carry her name into the future.”
“Nancy-Bird embodied the best of Australia with her unwavering enthusiasm, bravery, and vision for women in aviation.” “.
Anne Marie, her daughter, John, her son, Scott, Anna, Paul, and Baron, as well as her two great-grandchildren, Lachlan and Zoe, survive Ms. Walton. AAP ,.
Recognition and honours edit
Walton was well-known for her lifetime advocacy of nonprofit organizations and the underprivileged. She was consequently invested in 1966 as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE). In 1990, she received the title of Officer of the Order of Australia (AO). She was the inspiration for generations of female pilots. Despite the dangers of early aviation, she was never in an accident.
The Australian Women Pilots Association presents the Nancy-Bird Walton Memorial trophy, sponsored by the family, for the “most noteworthy contribution to aviation by a woman of Australasia.” [6].
In her honor, the Australian airline Qantas received the first Airbus A380 (VH-OQA). [7] Her name was originally written “Nancy Bird Walton” on the A380,[8] but Qantas accommodated her desire to use her late husband’s hyphenation (“Nancy-Bird”). The hyphen was added prior to the aircraft’s naming, not long after she was on the ceremonial flight over Sydney. [9] In 2010, after taking off from Singapore, this aircraft experienced a major uncontained engine failure while operating flight QF32; ironically, Walton had written the first officers reference when he initially started flying for Qantas. [10].
One of her last main interviews was for the feature-length documentary film Flying Sheilas which provided an insight into her life along with seven other Australian female pilots.
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