Ellen, a strong personality who dominated her daughter, died in Tenerife in 1967, and soon afterwards Batten returned to public life with several appearances related to aviation and her records.

[15] This stirred her childhood interest in aviation, which was further agitated in 1928 when the Australian pilot Charles Kingsford Smith flew from Australia to New Zealand in his Southern Cross Fokker F.VII aircraft.

[37] Dorée borrowed £400 from his mother to buy Batten a Gipsy Moth, with which she intended to beat Johnson's record for flying from England to Australia solo.

[38][39] Batten modified the Gipsy Moth, acquired from the King's Flight and previously flown by the then Prince of Wales,[40] by fitting extra fuel tanks to increase its range to 800 miles (1,300 km).

However, she downplayed her flying accidents and the financial support she had received earlier in her career[93] and the difference between her public and private personas was noted; the Castrol representative accompanying her on her tour of New Zealand found her to be arrogant and immodest.

[97] Returning to Australia, Batten was a radio commentator at the MacRobertson Air Race, for aircraft flying from England to Melbourne in honour of the city's centenary.

[104] In her autobiography, she stated that the purpose of her return was to be in London for the Silver Jubilee of George V.[105] Shepherd accompanied her in his own de Havilland Puss Moth part of the way to Darwin, from where she was to leave Australia.

Much faster than her old aeroplane, it had a six-cylinder 200 horsepower de Havilland Gipsy Six engine, electrically operated fuel pumps and starter motor, an enclosed cabin that seated three people and was capable of flying 150 miles (240 km) per hour.

Mackersey doubts the accuracy of this statement, pointing out Batten had received fees from newspapers and film companies, as well as money earned from the Australian flight and the sale of her Gipsy Moth.

According to Batten, she telegraphed for assistance but there was considerable consternation when she did not arrive at Rio at her scheduled time and, in the absence of knowledge of her whereabouts, search and rescue aircraft were dispatched in the morning.

She was gifted money by the local British Chamber of Commerce and made an honorary officer in the Brazilian Air Force, which also presented her a trophy, "The Spirit of Aviation".

According to Peggy Kelman, an Australian aviator of the 1930s interviewed by Mackersey, Batten had written to her mother for permission to take the tour but this was not forthcoming and she was ordered to go back to England.

In an interview given to a reporter of the Daily Express, she blamed an engine failure that forced her to glide to a crash landing on South Downs, in West Sussex.

During this time,[126] and claiming her aeroplane was "being overhauled",[131] she went to Paris to receive a gold medal presented by the French Academy of Sports and met Louis Blériot.

[133] The New Zealand Government had agitated for Batten to be made a Dame but this was not entertained by officials in London, who were reluctant to reward risky record flight attempts.

[145] This was overcome when she was able to produce a special endorsement provided by the British authorities that allowed the Gull to takeoff with an extra 1,000 pounds (450 kg) of weight beyond what was stipulated on its certificate of airworthiness.

To cover her expenses, Batten sought sponsorship from Frank Packer; his interest was lukewarm, advising her that with regular air services to Australia, the days of pioneering flights were over.

[183] After a delay because of weather, Batten's record attempt commenced from Darwin on 19 October 1937, with a flight to Rambang on Lombok Island, where she refueled, and flew onto Batavia to finish her first day.

[Note 10] She also was within four hours of the all-time record for the fastest flight time from Australia to England, this being held by Owen Cathcart Jones and Ken Waller who had flown the trip in the multi-engined de Havilland DH.88 Comet in 1934.

[197] She began to tour continental Europe with her Percival Gull; she was hosted by Blèriot's widow in Paris, King Leopold in Brussels, and by the Swedish royal family in Stockholm.

[198] Early in 1939 she commenced a lecture tour of Scandinavia and the Baltic States on behalf of the British Council; she was well received with favourable reports being sent back to London.

She sought help from Wenner-Gren, who used his connections with Germany to secure clearance for Batten to fly her Percival Gull back over the North Sea with a stop at Hamburg.

[203] Within days of the outbreak of the Second World War, Batten wrote to Harold Balfour, the Under-Secretary of State for Air, offering her services as a pilot, and her Percival Gull, for communication work.

She also had Sir Francis Shelmerdine, who was the head of the National Air Communications, an agency concerned with the coordination of civil aviation for the war effort, advocating on her behalf.

[204][Note 11] According to Batten's unpublished memoirs, she failed the required medical, blaming shortsightedness caused by the strain of inspecting maps in poor light during her record flight attempts.

[220][221] She was reunited with her Percival Gull, part of the Shuttleworth Collection,[Note 13] joined the British Women Pilots' Association, and gave interviews for BBC radio and television.

[230] For the next few years, Batten made occasional trips to England; she was an advocate of the Concorde supersonic airliner,[231] having viewed the prototype back in 1969 and longed to fly in it to New Zealand.

Buoyed by the public response to the end of her seclusion, she loaned her papers and memorabilia to the RAF museum at Hendon for the purpose of establishing an archive although much material relating to her personal life, particularly correspondence with her family, and also men with whom she had relationships was filtered out.

She left England in October, writing to her publisher on 8 November to advise of her temporary address in Mallorca and to query a taxation issue with her royalty payments for Alone in the Sky.

A bronze statue of Batten was unveiled at the airport in November 1989, and the Percival Gull in which she made the first solo trip from England to New Zealand in 1936 is displayed in the terminal.