Earhart departed Wheeler Field in Honolulu and landed at Oakland, California, setting a record for the longest solo flight by any person and the first solo crossing of the Pacific route. The flight cemented her reputation as the era's most celebrated female aviator, two years before her disappearance over the Pacific.
Amelia Earhart had already made her name crossing the Atlantic, but the Pacific route presented a different kind of danger: vast, empty ocean with no islands to spot for navigation and no radio infrastructure to rely on if something went wrong. She took off from Wheeler Field near Honolulu in her red Lockheed Vega on the evening of January 11, 1935, carrying only a thermos of soup, a few sandwiches, and a supply of tomato juice.
For nearly 18 hours she flew alone over open water, navigating by dead reckoning and celestial observation, fighting fatigue and the psychological strain of total isolation. She touched down at Oakland Airport to a crowd of more than 5,000 people who had gathered to watch her land, having covered 2,408 miles.
The flight made her the first person, man or woman, to fly solo across that stretch of the Pacific, and it boosted her already formidable celebrity. It also fed the public appetite for aviation records that would eventually push her toward the round-the-world attempt in 1937, during which she vanished near Howland Island, a mystery that endures to this day.