Once the Wright Brothers had invented a practical and consistently flyable machine (what we now call an airplane) in 1903, they began developing the aviation business. One of the many variations of that business was the flying school.
The first flight schools
Between 1908 and 1912, Orville and Wilbur Wright were busy. They had to demonstrate their new flying machines to the world—and the world's militaries.
After holding what was at the time the world's first version of an airshow in Pau, France, they established the world's first flying school outside town, where they trained three French pilots in 1909.
A few months after establishing that brick-and-mortar school for pilots in France, the Wright Brothers were doing a "learn to fly correspondence course" with a United States Army lieutenant named Bennie Foulois.
The course was created because Foulois, on orders from the U.S. Army, needed to learn how to operate the Wright 1909 Signal Corps Number One, the world's first military aircraft. The U.S. government had purchased the plane from the brothers.
Fouloise taught himself how to fly in Texas by corresponding with Orville and Wilbur. Miraculously, that aircraft has survived and is now preserved at the National Air & Space Museum in Dayton, albeit with very few original parts intact.
A few months later, after Fouloise had learned to pilot the first machine, the Army requested funding for another plane from Congress, and one congressman exclaimed, "For what? They already have one!”
The demand for flight school
After returning to Dayton from their worldly travels, the brothers started the Wright Aeroplane Company and began marketing their Wright “B” Flyer.
It was a success, and customers in the United States needed to know how to fly them. The Wright School of Aviation was the solution. For a brief time, there was a school near Montgomery, Alabama, and another near Augusta, Georgia. They soon relocated all of that to Huffman Prairie, where they perfected their invention in 1905.
Some of the first successful students became pilots on the Wright Demonstration Team. Between 1911 and 1916, 119 students were trained to fly.
One of Wright’s first principles is that a flying machine must achieve balance in the air, and the pilot must embrace that principle. Their experience with bicycles proved it.
One of the world’s first flight simulators required a student pilot to balance on a plank across the axle between two large wheels while holding a long 2x4 across their shoulders with a sand bag at each end. Legend has it that if the student could not master this task, their future at the Wright School was brief.
World War I
The First World War began in 1914, and the Wright School taught some military aviators who would go on to make history how to fly.
Henry “Hap” Arnold learned to fly there and became the Army Air Force's Chief of Staff in World War II. Another student, Norman Prince, founded the Lafayette Escadrille. Canadian pilot Arthur Roy Brown also learned to fly with the Wrights and is credited with shooting down Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron of Germany, in 1918—Brown certainly made it possible by chasing him so close to the ground along the frontlines that every Allied gun that could shoot opened up on von Richthofen's red fighter.
Marjorie Stinson trained at the Wright Flying School and earned her Fédération Aéronautique Internationale license in 1914, becoming the ninth woman in the U.S. to do so.
Since 1910, flying schools have taught men and women how to fly and remain popular today. The allure of flying transcends generations.
Wishing you blue skies and tailwinds,
Blue Skies and Tailwinds is presented by SNC, a global aerospace and defense firm, with support from the Wright State University Aviation Science and Technology Program. The series is produced at the Eichelberger Center for Community Voices at WYSO.
