Adrienne Bolland, born Boland, (25 November 1895 – 18 March 1975) was a French test pilot.

She was later described as "France's most accomplished female aviator",[1] setting a woman's record for loops done in an hour.

Born into a large family outside Paris, she became a pilot in her twenties to pay off gambling debts.

Later in her life she became involved in leftist political causes, and eventually became part of the French Resistance during World War II.

During a drinking session after losing all her money at the race track,[4] she expressed the desire to be a pilot.

[3] Bolland went to Caudron's headquarters at Le Crotoy, on the English Channel in northern France, and enrolled in flying lessons.

While her instructors saw great potential as a pilot, on the ground she continued to be difficult to get along with, sometimes physically attacking those she disagreed with.

"[4] After earning her license, she went to work for René Caudron doing what the other pilots did, mostly delivering and picking up planes.

Fragile and powered by Le Rhône 80 hp engines, they were not ideal for the trip, and she asked Caudron to send others.

[5] When she finally took off from Mendoza on 1 April 1921, she had 40 hours of flight time[3] and neither maps nor any knowledge of the area.

[6] The night before, Bolland said later, a Brazilian woman[6] claiming to be a worker of French descent who had never even seen an airplane before had visited her in her Buenos Aires hotel room.

The woman told her that on her flight, when she saw an oyster-shaped lake, to turn left towards a steep mountain face that resembled an overturned chair.

[7] The flight suit and pajamas she wore under her leather jacket were stuffed with newspapers, which proved incapable of keeping her warm.

[4] The plane had no windshield, and the blood vessels in her lips and nose burst from the cold air at that altitude during the four-hour flight.

[8] She continued to fly, setting a women's record of 212 loops[9] tying with ten other pilots, all men, in an 18-flight, 2,100-kilometre (1,300 mi) race around France the next year.

Bolland was able to land the plane on the roof of a nearby shed and restrain her panicked passenger.

Her combative nature continued to polarize those who knew her; a 1933 accident she survived was later ruled to have been the result of sabotage.