A WOMAN OF THE AIR.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19969, 10 December 1926, Page 13

A WOMAN OF THE AIR.

eying to be given up. ALLEGED JEALOUSY OF MEN. • \ Mrs Eliott Lynn, the famous pioneer English air-woman, has taken the drastic step of announcing her intention to give up flying as a protest against the jealousy which she declares has made her life as an aviator intolerable. “It is too painful to a person who has any sensitiveness to be subject to continual bickering and legpulling,” she said. Mrs Elliott Lynn attributes all her troubles to prejudices against women adopting aviation as a career, and she made no attempt to conceal her distress as she related her story. “I am terriblyupset that I should have to give up flying’” she said, “but I have been driven to it. For months I have had to contend with a campaign of veiled innuendo and open maliciousness which has made my life unbearable. It has all been a question of jealousy, because 1 have had too much publicity, and because there are men who like to scoff at the idea of a woman becoming a successful pilot. I have been jeered at behind my back and ridiculed to my face.” Mrs Eliott Lynn was the secretary of the Ladies’ Athenamm Club before she took up flying, and her success as an aviator has, in fact, been phenomenal. She was the first air-woman to give exhibitions in “stunt” flying in Britain, and she is the only woman who has a pilot’s “B” license, to obtain which a severe test, including night flying, has to be passed. „ “I have been flying for just a year, she said, “and I have beeii in the air for 350 hours, and covered 40,000 miles. Twice this summer I was refused permission to enter races. Then I offered a silver cup to bo presented to the best pupil of the year, but this was declined. It was afterwards accepted by another club. Frankly. I had hoped to make my living out of aviation. I have spent £2OOO on it, and I own two aeroplanes—a baby Moth, a dear little thing, like a runabout, and a fast fighting scout. ‘T have proved aviation can be made a successful career for a rvoman by earning about £7OO by instructing pupils and by giving exhibition flights, but every cheque I have had I have paid for bitterly. Xow I have been refused permission to act as an instructress, even in a voluntary capacity, because it is said that I am taking the bread out of the mouths of the men pilots. To-day I had a telephone conversation with an aviation official, who finally said he wanted to have nothing more to do with me. That was the last straw.”