The airport started commercial operations in 1919 and was Paris's only airport until the construction of Orly Airport in 1932. It is famous as the landing site for Charles Lindbergh's historic solo transatlantic crossing in 1927 in the "Spirit of St. Louis", and had been the departure point two weeks earlier for the French biplane "L'Oiseau Blanc (The White Bird)", which took off in an attempt at a transatlantic flight, but then mysteriously disappeared. Howard Hughes flew the second nonstop flight from New York to Paris in 1939, landing at Le Bourget and thereafter continuing onward to Moscow.