May 24, 2026 - This Week in Aviation History through the Windows of Flight

The history of aviation is full of men and women who looked at the sky and refused to accept what was possible yesterday as the limit of what was possible today. The fourth week of May gives us two stories that sit at the very heart of that history — and both of them are about wanting more than you have, and going after it anyway.The first takes us to Huffman Prairie, Ohio, on May 25th, 1910. For seven years, Bishop Milton Wright had enforced an absolute rule: his sons Orville and Wilbur would never fly together. If something went wrong, he would lose both of them at once. The rule held from Kitty Hawk through every exhibition flight, every military demonstration, every milestone. Seven years. Then on this May morning, the eighty-two-year-old bishop finally gave his permission — and the two brothers who invented powered flight were airborne together for the first and only time. Six minutes and four seconds. And then the bishop climbed in beside Orville himself, looked down at the Ohio prairie he had known all his life from the ground, and shouted above the engine noise: "Higher, Orville. Higher."The second story begins on May 31st, 1928, at Oakland, California, where a blue-and-gold Fokker trimotor called the Southern Cross pointed its nose toward Hawaii — and kept going. Australian aviator Charles Kingsford Smith and his three-man crew were attempting something that had never been done: fly from California to Australia across the Pacific Ocean. More than 7,400 miles. Three legs. One of them over 3,000 miles of open ocean with no landmarks, no alternate fields, and propeller tips flickering with St. Elmo's fire in the middle of the night. The story of how they got to Brisbane — and what happened to Smithy afterward — is one of the great adventure stories in all of aviation history.Two stories. One week. Both of them about looking at the horizon and asking for just a little more.Windows of Flight is brought to you by the Border Series — aviation thriller novels by host Eric Ristau. Old bold pilots, vintage aircraft, and plots ripped straight from today's headlines. Find the Border Series wherever books are sold, and learn more at www.ericristau.com.