Eddie August Henry Schneider (October 20, 1911 – December 23, 1940) was an American aviator who set three transcontinental airspeed records for pilots under the age of twenty-one in 1930.

[9][10] He died in an airplane crash in 1940, while training another pilot, when a Boeing-Stearman Model 75 belonging to the United States Navy Reserve overtook him and clipped his plane's tail at Floyd Bennett Field.

[14][7] He was never called Edward, he was baptized as "Eddie Auguste Henry Schneider" on November 12, 1911, at Our Saviour's Lutheran Church in Queens, New York City.

[7][16] In 1928–1929 he trained at Roosevelt Field on Long Island and became the youngest person in the United States to receive a commercial pilot certificate.

[19] On August 25, 1930, he set the round-trip transcontinental air speed record for pilots under the age of twenty-one years in his Cessna using a Warner Scarab engine.

He flew from Westfield, New Jersey, on August 14, 1930, to Los Angeles, California, in 4 days with a combined flying time of 29 hours and 55 minutes.

[1] After setting the transcontinental speed record he entered in the 1930 Ford National Reliability Air Tour in Chicago, which ran from August 23, 1930, to September 1, 1930.

[12][23][24][25] Time wrote: Sensation of the meet was the youngster Eddie Schneider, 19, who fell into last place by a forced landing of his Cessna and a three-day delay in Kentucky, then fought his way back to finish third, ahead of all other light planes.

[26]During one of the National Air Tours, Schneider had taken off in his Cessna with the Warner Scarab engine, from Chicago bound for the balloon races in Cleveland.

The officials said his quick action in dipping his plane close to the ground and then pulling clear of the grandstand had probably averted the most serious accident in the races.

Starting on January 1, 1935, Eddie leased the Jersey City Airport and ran his flying school from there until the field was converted into a sports stadium using WPA money.

[30][31] Eddie was taking off in a Travel Air three-seat, open-cockpit biplane with his student, Fred Weigel (1904–1990), when the motor died.

[17] Time magazine wrote on December 21, 1936: Hilariously celebrating in the ship's bar of the Normandie with their first advance pay checks from Spain's Radical Government, six able U.S. aviators were en route last week for Madrid to join Bert Acosta, pilot of Admiral Byrd's transatlantic flight, in doing battle against Generalissimo Francisco Franco's White planes.

Acosta, Schneider and Lord planned to escape from Bilbao to Biarritz, France, by motorboat after they had been refused a promised Christmas leave.

[37][38] When he returned he was questioned by Chief Assistant United States Attorney, John F. Dailey on January 15, 1937, in New York.

When talking to reporters Eddie said: I was broke, hungry, jobless... yet despite the fact that all three of us are old-time aviators who did our part for the development of the industry, we were left out in the cold in the Administration's program of job making.

[7][42] On December 23, 1940, around 1:25 pm, Eddie was killed in an accident at Floyd Bennett Field at age 29,[43] while training George Wilson Herzog (1903–1940).

[13] They were flying at about 600 feet, about to land, when United States Navy Reserve pilot Kenneth A. Kuehner, age 25, of Minster, Ohio, struck the tail assembly of Eddie's plane with his Boeing-Stearman Model 75.

The bodies were taken to King's County Hospital, and Eddie's cause of death was listed as "crushed chest & abdomen; hemothorax & hemoperitoneum in aeroplane crash".

The accident was investigated by the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) and Kuehner was ruled at fault for flying too low and failing to observe the traffic in front of him.

An inspection of the Navy plane revealed that the leading edges of both blades of the propeller had been gouged and nicked, apparently at the time the ...[46] In 1941 Gretchen appealed to Congress to pay for the funeral, which totaled $365.

[48] Around 1953–1954 Gretchen donated Schneider's books to the Smithsonian Institution and they are now housed at the National Air and Space Museum.