First Aerial Circumnavigation - Cross-equator Flight

Cross-equator Flight

After completing the first trans-Pacific crossing on 9 June 1928, flying from Oakland to Brisbane, Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm spent several months making other long-distance flights across Australia and to New Zealand. They decided to use their trans-Pacific flight as the first leg of a globe-circling flight. They flew the Southern Cross to England in June 1929, then across the Atlantic and North America, returning to Oakland where their trans-Pacific flight had begun.

Before Kingsford Smith's death in 1935, he donated the Southern Cross to the Commonwealth of Australia, for display in a museum. The aircraft is preserved in a special glass 'hangar' memorial on Airport Drive, near the International Terminal at Brisbane Airport in Queensland, Australia.