Guyana’s first flight, 1913

George Schmitt with a passenger in his biplane in Vermont (Aerodacious website)

Easter Monday, 7am, March 24, 1913 the residents of Georgetown were awakened to the rhythmic purr of a flying machine overhead, as George Schmitt took off from the Bel Air Park (Canon race course field) in a historic five-minute flight – the first ever in British Guiana.

Schmitt, a German national had arrived a few days earlier with his partner to give aerial displays. This was less than ten years after the