Women in aviation and nurse, who was unable to secure work flying proposed to airline executives that women be allowed to act as hostesses on planes. She was hired on a three-month trial basis by Boeing Air Transport and selected the first seven flight attendants for airlines, requiring them to be under 115 pounds, nurses and unmarried. Women continued to break records. In 1930, Amy Johnson an English aviator, made the first England to Australia flight by a woman. Antonie Strassmann, a German emigre to the US, became the first woman to successfully cross the Atlantic aboard an aircraft, traveling in May 1932
Claims to the first powered flight a steam-powered aeroplane which took off from a ramp with a sailor on board and remained airborne for a short distance. This has sometimes been claimed as the first powered flight in history but the claim is generally rejected because takeoff was gravity-assisted and flight was not sustained. It is however credited as the first powered take-off in history. Ten years later in 1884 the Russian Alexander Mozhaysky achieved similar success, launching his craft from a ramp and remaining airborne for 30 m (98 ft). The claim that this was a sustained flight has not been taken seriously outside Russia.