Uiver Collection Mollison was a pioneering Scottish pilot who had flown commercially for Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm's ill-fated Australian National Airways. His wife Amy was Amy Johnson, who in May 1930 had become the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia, flying a de Havilland DH 60 Gipsy Moth "Jason". English aviators Flight Lieutenant Charles Scott and Kenyan coffee plantation manager Captain Tom Campbell Black flew another Comet, a red aircraft, dubbed "Grosvenor House" by the historic hotel's owner. A third de Havilland DH 88 Comet was flown by Cathcart Jones and K. F. Waller, and was the
Claims to the first powered flight a proposal from the Wrights on the basis that their machine's ability to fly had not been demonstrated. Thus, when Alberto Santos-Dumont made a brief flight that year in his 14-Bis aeroplane, there was no acknowledged antecedent and he was acclaimed in France and elsewhere as the first to fly. Ader responded by claiming that he had flown in his Avion III back in 1897. Santos-Dumont's 1906 claim to flight has never been seriously disputed, although few authorities credit his as the first, while some have questioned the effectiveness of his controls. In 1908 the Wrights embarked on a series