Clara Adams-The original frequent first flyer

Is this the world’s original frequent flyer, and collector of historic first flights?

Her name is Clara Adams, 1884-1971, a rich pre-war widow whose collection of aviation memorabilia is held in the McDermott Library in the University of Texas-Dallas.

And these examples of that collection have been sent to us by a reader interested in our occasional series on The Past.

That $3000 ticket was worth the equivalent of $136,000 of today’s greenbacks in 1928. The boarding scene at the gondola (below) is a reminder that there were dozens of people in those times ready to pay seven times as much for a trans Atlantic ‘flight’ as Concorde commanded in its hey day.

The cabins were the Singapore Airlines Suites of the era, convertible between day rooms and a double berth.

They were also unheated.

Passengers changed for dinner, but sometimes into full winter wear, and the flying was mostly done between the base of the clouds and the Atlantic Ocean.

The Graf Zeppelin was even steered like an ocean liner.

The six engined Dornier flying boat was the next major inaugural.

It was one of the few passenger flying devices to have a maritime style engine room, in an era when weight savings and integrated digital flight control and engine auto thrust systems were half a century into the future.

The first recognisable airliners that Adams flew in by today’s standards were the likes of DC-3s, the original Lockheed Electras, and the second and final generation of flying boats.