This is one of the most famous accomplishments of the pioneer era of aviation, and not only won Blériot a lasting place in history but also assured the future of his aircraft manufacturing business.

The event caused a major reappraisal of the importance of aviation; the English newspaper The Daily Express led its story of the flight with the headline "Britain is no longer an Island.

For several days, high winds had grounded Blériot and his rivals: Hubert Latham, who flew an Antoinette monoplane, and Count de Lambert, who brought two Wright biplanes.

Battling turbulent wind conditions, Blériot made a heavy "pancake" landing, nearly collapsing the undercarriage and shattering one blade of the propeller, but he was unhurt.

It was later displayed outside the offices of the French newspaper Le Matin and eventually bought by the Musee des Arts et Metiers in Paris.

[8] After an accident at an aviation meeting in Istanbul in December 1909, Blériot gave up competition flying, and the company's entries for competitions were flown by other pilots, including Alfred Leblanc, who had managed the logistics of the cross-channel flight, and subsequently bought the first production Type XI, going on to become one of the chief instructors at the flying schools established by Blériot.

In August 1910 Leblanc won the 805 km (500 mi) Circuit de l'Est race, and another Blériot flown by Émile Aubrun was the only other aircraft to finish the course.

[10] In October 1910, Claude Grahame-White won the second competition for the Gordon Bennett Trophy flying a Type XI fitted with a 75 kW (100 hp) Gnome, beating a similar aircraft flown by Leblanc, which force-landed on the last lap.

Another was started at Pau, where the climate made year-round flying more practical, in early 1910 and in September 1910 a third was established at Hendon Aerodrome near London.

There were no dual-control aircraft in these early days, training simply consisting of basic instruction on the use of the controls followed by solo taxying exercises, progressing to short straight-line flights and then to circuits.

During the early stages of World War I eight French, six British and six Italian squadrons operated various military versions of the aircraft, mainly for observation duties but also as trainers, and in the case of single-seaters as light bombers with a bomb load of up to 25 kg.

In addition to the aircraft used by Louis Blériot to make his cross-channel flight in 1909, on display in the Musée des Arts et Métiers in Paris, a number of examples have been preserved.

Both the British and American restored-to-airworthiness examples, each now over a century old and believed to be the two oldest flyable aircraft anywhere on Earth, are usually only "hopped" for short distances due to their uniqueness.