The First U.S. Federal Pilot License 

On April 6, 1927, William P. MacCracken, Jr., 

Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aeronautics, 

received Pilot License No. 1, a private pilot license. 

Before accepting the license, MacCracken had 

offered the honor to Orville Wright, promising to 

waive the fee and examination. Wright declined 

because he no longer flew and did not think he 

needed a Federal license to show that he had been 

the first man to fly. 

The United States began licensing pilots as a result of the Air Commerce Act of 1926. The act 

instructed the Secretary of Commerce to foster air commerce; designate and establish airways; 

establish, operate, and maintain aids to air navigation (but not airports); arrange for research and 

development to improve such aids; license pilots; issue airworthiness certificates for aircraft and 

major aircraft components; and investigate accidents. Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover 

established the Aeronautics Branch to carry out the Department’s aviation regulatory 

responsibilities. 

In August 1926, MacCracken took office as the first Assistant Secretary of Commerce for 

Aeronautics, thus, becoming the first head of the Aeronautics Branch. MacCracken, who had 

assisted in drafting the Air Commerce Act, brought to the position experience as a World War I 

Army pilot, as chairman of the American Bar Association's committee on aviation law, and as 

general counsel of National Air Transport, a contract mail carrier he helped organize in 1925. 

With his appointment, the organization of the Aeronautics Branch proceeded rapidly. Secretary 

Hoover believed that the duties imposed by the Air Commerce Act should be carried out by 

existing Department of Commerce components. 

Although five principal units made up the 

Aeronautics Branch, which ranked as a bureau, 

only two were structurally part of the new Branch – 

the Air Regulations Division and the Air 

Information Division. The other three units 

followed directions from the Branch concerning 

work to be undertaken, but received detailed 

guidance and administrative support from other 

bureau-level components of the Department. Thus, 

the Airways Division was organized within the 

Bureau of Lighthouses, the Aeronautical Research 

Division within the Bureau of Standards, and the 

Air Mapping Section within the Coast and Geodetic 

Survey. 
 

MacCracken issued the first Air Commerce Regulations on December 31, 1926. The regulations 

prescribed operational and air traffic safety rules. They also required all aircraft engaged in 

interstate or foreign commerce to be licensed and marked with an assigned identification 

number. Pilots of licensed aircraft were required to hold private or commercial licenses. 

Commercial pilots were classed as either transport or industrial. Mechanics repairing aircraft 

engaged in air commerce were required to secure either engine or airplane mechanic licenses, or 

both. Owners, pilots, and mechanics had until March 1 (later extended to May 1), 1927, to apply 

for their licenses. Failure to apply was punishable by a $500 fine. 

Phoebe Fairgrave Omlie received Transport License No. 199 from 

the Aeronautics Branch on June 30, 1927, making her the first 

woman to obtain a pilot’s license from a civilian agency of the 

U.S. government. Omlie subsequently received aircraft and 

mechanic licenses and later became the first women to hold an 

aviation post in the federal government. She first worked as 

Special Advisor for Air Intelligence to the National Advisory 

Committee for Aeronautics (the predecessor to NASA), and later 

as Senior Flying Specialist for the Civil Aeronautics Authority. 

(Note: Harriet Quimby became the first licensed female aviator in 

the United States. She received her license from the Fédération 

Aéronautique Internationale, or FAI, an international 

organization based in Paris, on July 31, 1911.) 
Six months after Omlie received her pilot’s license, the 

Aeronautics Branch published a list of newly federally-licensed 

pilots. That list included James Herman Banning, who received 

a limited commercial license. Banning is the first known 

African American to receive a Federal pilot license. The first 

Federal transport pilot license issued to an African American is 

believed to have been received by C. Alfred “Chief” Anderson 

in 1932. (Note: Black aviators had been active in the United 

States as early as the years preceding World War I, an era 

when nearly all pilots were unlicensed. The first African 

American to receive a pilot certificate of any type was probably 

Eugene Bullard, who was licensed by the French air corps in 

1917 and served as a combat pilot. Emory Malick may have 

been the first African American male to receive an FAI license 

in 1912. In 1921, Bessie Coleman became the first African 

American to receive a license from the FAI.)