Virginia Thomas

She was born in Brasov where she was employed in the IAR plants, the time during which she first came into contact with aviation. She carried out her first fligh in 1936, at the Braşov Air Club and continued studying flying at the Mircea Cantacuzino School of Aviation in Bucharest where she got her Second Class pilot’s license.
In 1939, she was hired as a stewardess at the LARES airlines company and apparently she was the first woman in Romania to obtain a stewardess position. In 1940, she received a new position as budgetary pilot in the Medical Squadron and kept transporting wounded people until the fall of Odessa, after which they returned to Bucharest. On 27 September 1941, she received the Aeronautical Virtue in Wartime with Swords, Golden Cross class.

Since 1942 until 1943 she was flying in the 108th Light Transport Squadron, transporting wounded to various hospitals in the country or in the area.

After the war, she learned how to fly a glider at the school in Câmpina where she received licenses in the A, B and C classes, with the intention to enroll in the instructors’ school. However, she was not allowed to do so because she had married an Englishman named Kinghard – an unforgivable sin in the communist period. She followed her husband and ultimately settled in Paris.