A Texan woman, Linda Finch, is planning to recreate Amelia Earhart’s last and most perplexing around the world. Finch found one of only two twin-engine Lockheed Electra 10E’s, the type Earhart used, known to exist and will fly it around the same path with many of the same stops as did Earhart. Pratt & Whitney is financing the $4.5 million project: $1.5 million was used to restore the plane and finance the project and another $3 million was used to create and distribute educational packets about Earhart, science, flight and geography. Finch commented that she will make many of the same stops along the way and hopes to “teach children they can and should dream big dreams.”
Earhart, born in 1897, was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean and across the United States. On March 17, 1937 she attempted to become the first person to fly around the world at the equator. She made it three fourths of the way but then failed to arrive at a scheduled stop at Howland Island. They left absolutely no trace, and speculation remains to this day as to what happened to her and her navigator Fred Noonan.
