FATAL PRACTICE FLIGHT

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22350, 22 February 1936, Page 29 (Supplement)

FATAL PRACTICE FLIGHT

MOTHER'S ADVICE NOT HEEDED An English mother who had forbidden her daughter, an only child, to fly, learned recently that the girl had been killed in an aeroplane crash at Alicante, Spain, when the machine caught fire. The girl, Miss Betty Malcolm, aged 22, daughter of Brigadier-General H. H. L. Malcolm, of Canford Cliffs, near Bournemouth, was planning "an attempt on the record for a solo flight from England to Australia and a friend stated that her fatal flight was a practice one. She had landed at Alicante to refuel on her way from Barcelona, to Valencia, and had just taken off when she banked sharply to avoid the hangar. One wing touched the ground and the machine crashed into the hangar. Aerodrome officials ran to help, but could not get near the burning wreckage for more than half an hour. Her mother first heard of her daughter's fate when a Daily Mail reporter spoke to her at her home. "She was my only child," she said, " I was strongly opposed to her flying. I was afraid that Betty woyld kill herself, but she would not listen to me. " Slifc pointed to the splendid flights she had made all over Europe since she learned to fly about three years ago, and said she was determined to become famous. " Betty would rush off at a moment's notice without telling anybody where she was going and, with only a few things flung hastily into a suitcase, disappear in her aeroplane across the Channel for weeks on end."