The King's Cup air race is a British handicapped cross-country event, which has taken place annually since 1922.

The art of winning the race outright is therefore to beat the handicappers, rather than to make the fastest flight as such.

It covered a distance of 810 miles from Croydon Aerodrome, south of London, to Glasgow, Scotland and back again after an overnight stop.

The winner of this first race was Frank L. Barnard, chief pilot of the Instone Air Line, in a passenger-carrying Airco DH.4A.

In 1953, there was a fatal mid-air collision at the King's Cup Air Race meeting at Southend Airport, in which John Crowther, a hotelier from the Marine Hotel, Tankerton, Kent, was killed.