English Channel Dover and Boulogne but later also Ramsgate (Pegwell Bay) to Calais. The journey time Dover to Boulogne was roughly 35 minutes, with six trips per day at peak times. The fastest crossing of the English Channel by a commercial car-carrying hovercraft was 22 minutes, recorded by the "Princess Anne" MCH SR-N4 Mk3 on 14 September 1995, The first aircraft to cross the Channel was a balloon in 1785, piloted by Jean Pierre François Blanchard (France) and John Jeffries (US). Louis Blériot (France) piloted the first airplane to cross in 1909. The sport of Channel swimming traces its origins to the
Women in aviation a passenger in an untethered hot air balloon, which flew above Lyon, France in 1784. Four years later, Jeanne Labrosse became the first woman to fly solo in a balloon and would become the first woman to parachute, as well. Sophie Blanchard took her first balloon flight in 1804, was performing as a professional aeronaut by 1810 and was made Napoleon's chief of air service in 1811. Blanchard, the first woman who was a professional in the air, died in a spectacular crash in 1819. In June 1903, Aida de Acosta, an American woman vacationing in Paris, convinced Alberto Santos-Dumont,