The Spirit Of St. Louis Flies Again!

The Lindbergh Foundation announced Wednesday its third-annual on-line auction includes only one item -- a ride in the Spirit of St. Louis -- with up to 12 winners possible.

The EAA Spirit of St. Louis replica is making a rare appearance during the weekend of the Lindbergh Foundation's 2009 Lindbergh Award Celebration on May 15, 16, and 17 at the EAA AirVenture Pioneer Airport (or Weeks Hangar), exclusively for the winners of the Lindbergh Foundation's on-line auction. The official start of the bidding process will be announced at a press conference on April 22 at the Lakeland Fly-in.

"We are extremely grateful to EAA for making the Spirit available to us for our auction," said Foundation Chairman John King, co-chairman of King Schools. "The Spirit remains one of the most recognizable airplanes in the world, an icon of Charles Lindbergh’s famous record-setting New York-to-Paris flight. We hope the opportunity for a ride in this incredible aircraft will draw lots of excitement from the aviation community and increase the interest in the mission and programs of the Foundation as well."

The original Spirit of St. Louis hangs in the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum. Very few flying Spirit replicas exist, and the EAA replica is the only one in the world capable of carrying a passenger.

The EAA built its Spirit of St. Louis replica from scratch with painstaking detail, using the "Morrow" plans from the Smithsonian Institution. However, in this unique replica the EAA customized the airplane by installing a forward pilot station in place of Lindbergh’s large fuel tank. This means the EAA pilot commands the aircraft from up front so the lucky passenger can experience flight in the aircraft from the actual "Lindbergh seat" position, providing a view that is exactly the way Lindbergh himself would have seen it.

Pilots will enjoy logging "stick time" in this historic time machine through the fully functioning dual flight controls. This Spirit replica will not make another public appearance until 2011.

FMI: www.lindberghfoundation.org, www.eaa.org