Local aviation buffs are fond of calling Oakland International Airport “the Kitty Hawk of the West Coast” for reasons that Oakland North’s Ryan Phillips makes clear in a post (with slideshow) about the Oakland Aviation Museum:
The first “lighter than air” flight west of the Rockies launched from Oakland in 1853. The first controlled flight in the world—a glider where the pilot had control from the ground—took off from Oakland in 1883. The first powered dirigible (1904), the first powered flight from the West Coast (1909) and Amelia Earhart’s final flight (1937) all originated in Oakland.
Shown: In the AP photo, Amelia Earhart’s plane is surrounded by thousands at the airport in 1935 after a flight from Honolulu. Oakland Airport Museum operations manager Scott Buckingham tells Phillips of Earhart’s fateful last flight: “A lot of people think she left from Miami, but Miami is just the point at which she left the continental United States. She started from [the Oakland Airport’s] North field.”
