GRANDMA'S FLIGHT.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 199, 24 August 1939, Page 9

GRANDMA'S FLIGHT.

ROUND WORLD AT 72.

TICKET COST HER £450.

KNITTED OWN FLYING SUIT,

(Special.—By Air Mail.)

LONDON, July 29.

The first woman passenger to fly) round the world by air arrived at Croydon this week—and left again after staying two days. She is Mrs. Virginia Pfuderer, 72-year-old grandmother, of Riverside, Illinois, United States. She flew from Chicago to New York, from New York in the Pan-American Chpper to Lisbon and Marseilles and thence to Paris and on to Croydon. Then she set off 'by Imperial Airways 'plane from Southampton to India, Burma, and Hongkong, and thence across the Pacific to San Francisco and Los Angeles, and so back to Chicago.

"My friends back home think I'm crazy to go flying round the globe at my age," she said before she feft, "but I see nothing peculiar in it. Why, I've been a traveller since I was a small girl. I've been all over the Western hemisphere, and flown from Miami, Florida, to Rio.

"The travel people at home seemed a bit flabbergasted when I told 'em I wanted to go on a pretty long trip, with the Orient thrown in. You see, I'm fairly comfortably off, and when ihy lawyer mentioned that there was a little ready money which I might invest I made up my mind at once that I'd spend it in my own way. They had a mighty big job mapping out the trip for me, and fixing up everything everywhere — hotels and things. And then they gave me my ticket—the first of its kind. It cost me something over 2000 dollars — round about £450. •

"This is my flying kit," said Mrs. Pfuderer, smoothing the sleeve of her plum-coloured dress. "I knitted it myself—specially for this trip. This stuff doesn't crumple or crease, and that's a blessing when you're flying across oceans."