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In 1933, the world-renowned aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife, radio operator, and navigator, Anne Morrow Lindbergh conducted a northern transatlantic exploratory survey flight for a commercial air route between North America and Europe for Pan American Airways. In 1931, they had explored a northern route to Asia. During a stop in Reykjavik, Iceland, he wrote a 12-page letter to Pan American Airways president and founder Juan Trippe regarding his observations and thoughts about the route. In the following paragraph the far-sighted Lindbergh predicted how aircraft would fly the route in the future: In establishing a trans Atlantic air route it is fully as important to decide which route will be most advantageous in the future as it is to decide which is the best to operate over today. It must be remembered that the route which is best for our present equipment and experience will not necessarily be as good as some other route when we have more efficient aircraft and have learned more about transoceanic flying. It has always been my belief that with every advance in aviation the air routes will tend to follow more closely the great circle course between the localities they serve. I believe that in the future aircraft will detour bad weather areas by flying above them rather than around them. Consequently I suggest that Pan American Airways lay plans for their eventual trans Atlantic air route to follow the appropriately the great circle to Europe. Just over two decades later, pressurized, long-range airliners began flying above the weather, between North America and Europe, following transpolar, great-circle routes, just as Lindbergh had envisioned. Modern jetliners have continued to fly these routes into the present. Photographic reproduction of C. A. Lindbergh to J. T. Trippe correspondence 1933 SFO Museum Collection Gift of the Pan Am Historical Foundation http://airandspace.si.edu/explore-and-learn/multimedia/detail.cfm?id=2769
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