The first licensed female pilot earned her wings
On this day · 8 March 1910
On a March morning in 1910, a French former actress became the first woman in the world cleared to fly an airplane.
On March 8, 1910, the Aéro-Club de France issued aviator license No. 36 to Élise Raymonde Deroche — better known by her stage name, Raymonde de Laroche — making her the first woman anywhere to be formally licensed to fly an airplane.
A Parisian plumber’s daughter who had worked as an actress, she had talked the aircraft builder Charles Voisin into teaching her the previous autumn. Because his machine seated only one, she flew solo from the start while he shouted instructions from the grass.
The license wasn’t a courtesy — she had to handle the aircraft alone to earn it.
De Laroche went on to fly exhibitions across Europe and won the Aéro-Club’s Femina Cup in 1913 for a flight of more than four hours. She survived a serious crash, only to die in 1919 testing an experimental aircraft. A century on, March 8 doubles as a date the aviation world still marks in her name.
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