proud to be Romanian…..and proud to be a flight attendant <3

Romania has a long and rich tradition in the aviation field. At the beginning of the 20th century, Flight pioneers like Aurel Vlaicu and Traian Vuia brought important attributions to early aviation history building revolutionary aeroplanes and changing the age’s mentality. AUREL VLAICU   His greatest ambition was to be the first to fly over the Carpathian Mountains. That’s why in 1913, he started to build a new plane, the Vlaicu 3. It was planned to be built entirely of metal, the idea itself being remarkable for the time. The first all metal planes only appeared much later. During that project, he learned that a foreign pilot intended to make the same flight. So on September 13, 1913, Vlaicu took off near Bucharest in the Vlaicu 2. Heading towards the mountains, he hoped to make the crossing in a Romanian airplane before the other pilot. Unfortunately, his precious dream was not to be realized. Over the village Banesti, near Campina town, his plane crashed and he was killed. A monument was established there to commemorate forever the courage and the tragic end of Aurel Vlaicu.

Aurel Vlaicu attended primary school in his native village of Bintinti. Next he attended high school at Orastie and Sibiu. In 1902 he entered the Polytechnic School of Budapest, and in 1903 he studied at the Polytechnic School of Munchen.After working at Opel car factory in Rüsselsheim, he returned to Binţinţi and built a glider he flew in the summer of 1909. Later that year he moved to Bucharest in the Kingdom of Romania, where he began the construction of Vlaicu Nr. I airplane that flew for the first time on June 17, 1910 over Cotroceni airfield. With his Vlaicu Nr. II model, built in 1911, Aurel Vlaicu won several prizes summing 7,500 Austro-Hungarian krone (for precise landing, projectile throwing and tight flying around a pole) in 1912 at Aspern Air Show near Vienna, where he competed against 42 other aviators of the day, including Roland Garros. Encouraged by the successes achieved with his aeroplane and stimulated by similar unprecedented attempts like the famous Louis Bleriot’s English Channel crossing in 1909, Vlaicu took the courageous decision to cross the Carpathian Mountains from the southern part of the country to Transylvania.Pressed by the gossip that two other Romanian pilots were about to attempt that crossing, he didn’t wait for the finalization of the third prototype “Vlaicu III” – his design of the years 1912-1913 that was to be the first all-metal aeroplane in the world – and took his chances with the old and by then worn aeroplane “Vlaicu II”. Sadly, this hasty and uncharacteristic decision would cost him everything. On 13th of September 1913, aboard his “Vlaicu II”, while he was attempting to cross the Carpathians he made – according to two of his best friends and witnesses to the accident statements – an unfortunate flying mistake and he crashed down near the village Banesti. He was expected to participate in the ASTRA (Asociaţia Transilvană pentru Literatura Română şi Cultura Poporului Român) festivities in Orastie, near Binţinţi. His body was buried five days later in Bellucemetery, in Bucharest. During his short career Aurel Vlaicu built three original, arrow-shaped airplanes. All his planes had flight controls in front, two coaxial propellers, NACA-like ring around the engine, and tricycle-landing gear with independent suspension and brakes. At the time of his death, a two-seated monoplane Vlaicu Nr. III, contracted by Marconi Company for experiments with aerial wireless radio, was only partially built. After Vlaicu’s death, the plane was completed by his friends Giovanni Magnani and Constantin Silişteanu, and several short experimental flights were made during 1914. Further tests were hindered by the unusual controls of the aeroplane which no other pilot was familiar with. In 1916, during the German occupation of Bucharest, Vlaicu III was seized and shipped to Germany. The airplane was last seen in a 1942 aviation exhibition in Berlin. Vlaicu was posthumously elected to the Romanian Academy in 1948. The second largest airport in Romania Aurel Vlaicu International Airport, and a YR-ASA registered TAROM Airbus A318-111 are named after him. A museum was established in his home village, now named Aurel Vlaicu. http://www.hunedoara.djc.ro/ObiectiveDetalii.aspx?ID=2172 The 50 Romanian lei banknote has a portrait of Vlaicu on front, and on reverse a drawing of one of his airplanes and a cross-section through the Gnome rotary engine of the airplane.      “When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”