[3] In 1915 Miller met and talked to famous aviator Ruth Law and sat in the cockpit of her Wright Model B aircraft.

[6] In 1923 a barnstorming pilot, Sloan "Swanee" Taylor, gave pleasure flights in a decrepit Jenny from a field near his home, and the 17-year-old Miller, who was working in a machine shop during school holidays, helped him with maintenance and repairs.

The aircraft was actually the Canadian version of the Jenny, a Canuck, but was modified with larger wings, giving slower take-offs and landings.

After doing a lot of repairs to it himself,[7] Miller practised on the ground for a few weeks, and on his 18th birthday found himself rapidly approaching a stone wall, so rather than crashing into it, he applied more power and took off.

After around an hour's flying, exploring the effect of the controls, he eventually managed a reasonable landing, whereupon a local farmer who had been watching him, asked him if he gave rides.

Miller said yes, and took him up for a handful of change, and on landing two other passers-by asked for rides, which he also did, charging $5 a flight, the amount painted on the side of the aircraft.

[6] Miller made the trip to Roosevelt Field on 20 May 1927 to watch Charles Lindbergh take off on his pioneering transatlantic flight.

His main business was repair and maintenance of the aircraft, many of them New Standard models, used by bootleggers to bring alcohol in from Canada.

[14] Assisted by efficient ground crew to marshal the passengers and refuel the aircraft, he would do up to 350 short flights (less than a minute each) a day.

[11] While doing aerobatics in the New Standard, Marine Corps officers saw him and invited him to join the Reserve at Pensacola, Florida, and he served for a while at Quantico, Virginia, as a qualified naval aviator.

Miller's correspondence had continued, and he visited Pitcairn, soon ordering a PCA-2, becoming the first private individual in the US to purchase an autogyro, at a cost of $15,000 (equivalent to $300,500 in 2023).

His flight set a record which lasted 72 years, when it was broken by Andrew Keech in his Herron-Keech Little Wing LW-5 on 3 October 2003.

[14] While he was in San Diego, Miller demonstrated the PCA-2 to the military at the North Island, Coronado, base,[20] including giving passenger flights to two admirals.

Fêted by oil companies and film star Mary Pickford, his departure was delayed until 21 June, when he started the return flight to Willow Grove, arriving on 1 July.

NC10780, setting out from Newark Metropolitan Airport on 28 May and after an unhurried journey with many publicity stops reached Oakland, California on 6 June.

[10] In 1936 he joined United Air Lines as a Boeing 247D co-pilot flying the Cheyenne to Salt Lake City and New York to Chicago routes.

[10] Kellett had obtained a licence to produce Pitcairn autogyros, and asked Miller to be the test pilot for his new wingless version, the two-seat KD-1.

[24] Other test pilots had declined to fly it, fearing for the safety of the aircraft, but Miller, thoroughly understanding the principles involved, was convinced that the radical new design would be safe, and accepted Kellett's offer.

[5] This success emboldened Kellett and Miller to lobby Washington to enable regular autogyro mail services to start, and an act was passed on 15 April 1938.

[11] Kellett and Miller then approached Eddie Rickenbacker of Eastern Air Lines with a view to using Kellett autogyros to fly the mail between the main post office in Philadelphia and the nearby Camden Central Airport in New Jersey, a distance of just under six miles, crossing the Delaware River and saving a considerable amount of time.

[25] Kellett then designed a new version, the KD-1B, with a canopy enclosing the rear, pilot's seat, a radio, blind-flying instruments, a landing light and other changes to Eastern's requirements.

There was only one minor incident when the autogyro, piloted by Lukens, was blown over by a 55 mph (89 km/h) wind on the post office roof while taxiing.

He also formed Miller's Machine Works, and on his days off, he manufactured small parts for the Columbia Aircraft Corporation, who had started producing Grumman J2F-6 Ducks[26] at their Valley Stream plant on Long Island.

[5] For the latter part of his career he commuted daily in his Beech V35A Bonanza N19WC from Poughkeepsie to whichever New York airport he was scheduled to fly from – he claimed that he was the only airline pilot in the area to do that.

For a few years before this the FAA insisted that he flew with a safety pilot, but Miller gave them strict instructions to never touch the controls.

[34] He wrote a book called Flying Stories: A Chronicle of Aviation History from Jennys to Jets by the Pilot Who Flew Through It All, published in 2002.

[14] Miller received the Sikorsky Award for his part in the evolution of the helicopter, a Certificate of Honour from the National Aeronautic Association for his contributions to aviation, and had been made an honorary fellow of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots for having “promoted the moral obligation of the test pilot to the safety of the aerospace world”.

[34] Johnny Miller died on 23 June 2008, aged 102, of natural causes at Vassar Brothers Medical Center, Poughkeepsie.