Amelia Earhart received her pilot's license in 1923. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, women pilots competed for records, and Earhart was one of them. In August 1929 she finished third in the first air race across the United States for women, an event that Louise Thaden won, and in 1930 Elinor Smith was named one of the three best pilots in the United States. In 1931 Ruth Nichols held the women's world speed, altitude and distance records, while Earhart had set an unofficial women's altitude record of 14,000 feet in 1922 and the women's flying speed record of 181.18 mph in 1930. Earhart also became the first woman to fly an autogiro, and in April 1931 she set an altitude record for it.

In the summer of 1931 Earhart completed a solo transcontinental flight across the United States in an autogiro. In July 1932 she set the women's record for the fastest non-stop transcontinental flight. Earhart was elected the first president of the Ninety-Nines in 1931 and served until 1933, and the Ninety-Nines were a group of women pilots, of whom 99 out of 285 licensed U.S. women pilots became charter members. In 1935 Earhart joined Purdue University as a counselor on careers for women, and she set many flying records over those years.

In May 1932 Earhart flew a Lockheed Vega from Newfoundland across the Atlantic to Northern Ireland. Some people think she was the first person to fly alone across the Atlantic, but she was not, because in 1932 she became the first woman, and the second person, to do it. It was her second trip across the Atlantic, making her the first person to cross it twice by air, since in 1928 she had crossed as a passenger. The 1932 flight made her an international hero. Flying alone from Hawaii to California was a dangerous flight to attempt in 1935. Earhart flew a Lockheed 5C Vega from Honolulu to Oakland from January 11 to 12, 1935, and she hoped the flight would pave the way for air travel to Hawaii. Chilled during the 2,408-mile flight, she unpacked a thermos of hot chocolate.

In 1937 Earhart tried to fly around the world in a Lockheed Electra, and the flight set off from Miami, Florida, on June 1, 1937, with Fred Noonan, the navigator, who flew with her. In July 1937 they left New Guinea heading for tiny Howland Island, where the Coast Guard cutter Itasca was waiting to support the flight, and radio contact between the plane and the Itasca was lost on July 2, 1937. The U.S. Navy and Coast Guard carried out a very large search that July, and it found no trace of the plane or its crew. As of November 2026 the Electra has not been found.

Words to know

• autogiro: rotor aircraft
• transcontinental: across a continent
• altitude: height
• navigator: route finder
• cutter: Coast Guard ship