Google celebrates 107th birthday of Egypt’s first female aviator

On Wednesday, the Google search engine commemorated the 107^th birthday of Egypt’s first female aviator, Lotfia al-Nadi, on its homepage. In 1933, Nadi is reported to have been the first woman in Africa and the Arab World to fly solo.

She was born on October 29, 1907 and as a youth began to deviate from the stereotypical roles and future that her father had expected of her.

In late 1933, Nadi is reported to have received her pilot’s license, at the age of 26. She was only the 34^th pilot in Egypt, with all 33 of her predecessors being males.

Then on December 19, of that same year, Nadi participated in an international women’s aviation race from Cairo to Alexandria, said to involve 62 planes. She crossed the finish line in first place, but the panel of judges found that she had missed a turn along the fixed aerial route. She was granted an honorary award, as opposed to the first place prize, in this race.

Nadi would go on to partake in further races for female aviators, and managed to win medals for Egypt.

Following her pioneering flights, Nadi’s example inspired several other Egyptian women to become airplane pilots and instructors. Egyptian female aviators are reported to have increased in number until around the year 1945. However, since then a negligible number of women have become aviators in Egypt.

On Wednesday, a host of Egyptian and Arabic media outlets, referencing the Wikipedia entry about her, reported that Nadi was the second woman in the world to fly solo.

However, these accounts are likely inaccurate as the first recorded solo flight by a female aviator was America’s Blanche Stuart Scott in 1910, and a host of other women are recorded as following suit prior to Nadi’s pioneering solo flight of 1933 in Egypt.

Nadi and one of America’s pioneering aviators, Amelia Earheart, are reported to have corresponded with letters to each other, although they never met in person.

Earheart was the first female aviator to pilot an aircraft on a solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1932. She would attempt a round-the-world solo flight five years later, but she and her plane went missing in July 1937, never to be found.

As for Nadi, she briefly served as the secretary general of the Egyptian Aviation Club in the 1950s. She was injured in an airplane accident during her tenure in this club, and subsequently traveled to Switzerland for medical treatment. Nadi spent most of the remainder of her life in the city of Laussane.

She was decorated and celebrated, not only as a pioneering Egyptian pilot, but also as an advocate of women’s equality and rights in the region. Nadi died in 2002, at the age of 95 in Cairo.