Amy Johnson CBE (born 1 July 1903 – disappeared 5 January 1941) was a pioneering English pilot who was the first woman to fly solo from London to Australia.

Because her body was never recovered, the precise cause of her death—drowning, hypothermia or being pulled into a warship's moving propellers, is unknown and has been a subject of discussion since the possibility of friendly fire was raised in 1999 (see below).

[2] She bought a secondhand de Havilland DH.60 Gipsy Moth G-AAAH and named it Jason after her father's business trade mark.

Flying Jason, she left Croydon Airport, Surrey, on 5 May and landed at Darwin, Northern Territory on 24 May, a distance of 11,000 miles (18,000 km).

[11][12][Note 2] Johnson next bought a de Havilland DH.80 Puss Moth G-AAZV which she named Jason II.

In July 1931, she and co-pilot Jack Humphreys became the first people to fly from London to Moscow in one day, completing the 1,760 miles (2,830 km) journey in approximately 21 hours.

[14] In July 1933, Johnson and Mollison attempted to fly the de Havilland DH.84 Dragon I G-ACCV, named Seafarer,[13] nonstop from Pendine Sands, South Wales, heading to Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn, New York.

[4] In 1934, the Mollisons set a record time for a flight from Britain to India in a de Havilland DH.88 Comet named Black Magic, as part of the England to Australia MacRobertson Air Race.

[20] On 4 May 1936, Johnson made her last record-breaking flight, starting from Gravesend Airport and regaining her Britain to South Africa record in G-ADZO, a Percival Gull Six.

[29] Johnson described a typical day in her life in the ATA in a humorous article, published posthumously in 1941, for The Woman Engineer journal.

[30] Five hours after her departure, a convoy of wartime vessels in the Thames Estuary spotted a parachute coming down and saw a person alive in the water calling for help, witnesses describing the voice as female.

[32] Lt Cmdr Walter Fletcher, the Captain of HMS Haslemere,[Note 3] navigated his ship to attempt a rescue.

[35] Tom Mitchell, from Crowborough, Sussex, claimed to have shot Johnson's aircraft down when she twice failed to give the correct identification code during the flight.

[43] A blue plaque commemorates Johnson at Vernon Court, Hendon Way, in Childs Hill, London NW2.

[citation needed] "Amy Johnson Avenue" is a main road running northwards from Tiger Brennan Drive, Winnellie, to McMillans Rd, Karama, in Darwin, Australia.

In 2011 the Royal Aeronautical Society established the annual Amy Johnson Named Lecture[47] to celebrate a century of women in flight[Note 4] and to honour Britain's most famous female aviator.

Carolyn McCall, Chief Executive of EasyJet, delivered the Inaugural Lecture on 6 July 2011 at the Society's headquarters in London.

The Lecture is held on or close to 6 July every year to mark the date in 1929 when Amy Johnson was awarded her pilot's licence.

Over a six-month period, inmates of Hull Prison built a full-size model of the Gipsy Moth aircraft used by Johnson to fly solo from Britain to Australia.

[50][51] A mural reading QUEEN OF THE AIR (which was a nickname the British press gave Johnson) was painted in Cricklewood railway station to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of women obtaining the right to vote in the UK.

(1980) was an avant-garde documentary written and directed by feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey and semiologist Peter Wollen.

In radio, the 2002 BBC Radio broadcast The Typist who Flew to Australia, a play by Helen Cross, presented the theme that Johnson's aviation career was prompted by years of boredom in an unsatisfying job as a typist and sexual adventures including a seven-year affair with a Swiss businessman who married someone else.

[56] In music, Johnson inspired a number of works, including the song "Flying Sorcery" from Scottish singer-songwriter Al Stewart's album, Year of the Cat (1976).

[60] Indie pop band The Lucksmiths used a clip of her Australia welcome speech as an intro to their song The Golden Age of Aviation.

[62] In 2023, screenwriter Sally Wainwright, best known for Happy Valley, revealed that she was interested in writing a drama about Johnson but "failed to convince" TV channels.