page_title: Hubert Latham
section_title: Flying school
hierarchical_section_title: Hubert Latham / Aviation career / Flying school
context_page_description: Arthur Charles Hubert Latham was a French aviation pioneer. He was the first person to attempt to cross the English Channel in an aeroplane. Due to engine failure during his first of two attempts to cross the Channel, he became the first person to land an aeroplane on a body of water.
  In August 1909 at the Grande Semaine d'Aviation de la Champagne he set the world altitude record of 155 metres in his Antoinette IV. In April 1910 he set the official World Airspeed Record of 48.186 miles per hour in his Antoinette VII.
context_section_description: In early 1909, the Antoinette company worked with the French Army at Camp Châlons near Mourmelon-le-Grand to establish the first military aircraft trials, a flight school and a workshop. The school, run by Levavasseur's brother-in-law Charles Wachter, included the Antoinette Trainer  a rudimentary flight simulator that comprised a half-barrel mounted on a universal joint, with flight controls, pulleys, and stub-wings (poles) to allow the trainee to maintain balance while instructors applied external forces.
  Within months of both learning to fly and developing his flying technique, Latham became the school's principal instructor. On 17 August 1909 he was awarded Aviator's Certificate number 9 by the Aéro-Club de France. His pupils in 1909 included Marie Marvingt, who became the first woman to fly combat missions as a bomber pilot and established air ambulance services throughout the world, and Infante Alfonso, Duke of Galliera, cousin of King Alfonso XIII of Spain and the first Spanish military pilot.
caption: Antoinette's rudimentary 'flight simulator' at Châlons. This method of flight training was mimicked quite accurately in the 1965 film Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines
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