Taking flight

Sir, – I quite enjoyed Oliver O'Hanlon's piece on Amy Johnson ("'The Queen of the Air'", April 5th).

However, it states that Charles Lindbergh was the first person to fly across the Atlantic West-East. Lindbergh was not the first to cross the Atlantic in any direction.

That honour belongs to two British pilots, John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown, who flew from St John’s Newfoundland to Clifden in Connemara on the June 14th, 1919, eight years before Lindbergh’s flight.

If I am not mistaken, there is a monument in Clifden marking the end of that historic flight.

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What Lindbergh did achieve, however, was to become the first to fly solo across the Atlantic and the first person to fly from New York to Paris. – Yours, etc,

IAN KAVANAGH,

Kilmainham,

Dublin 8.