Across Asia: Australia

Woman pilot pioneer dies

Aviation pioneer Nancy Bird-Walton, who became the first woman in Australia to operate a commercial aircraft, died yesterday from natural causes, her family said. She was 93.

Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith, the first man to fly across the mid-Pacific, taught Watson how to fly in 1933, when she was just 17 years old. Two years later, she obtained a commercial pilot's license and began taking paying passengers for joyrides around the country.