Walter Mittelholzer

Walter Mittelholzer (born April 2 1894 in St. Gallen; died May 9 1937 in Styria) was a Swiss aviation pioneer. He was active as a pilot, photographer, travel writer, and also as one of the first aviation entrepreneurs.

Mittelholzer got his private pilot's license in 1917, and in 1918 he completed his instruction as a military pilot.

On November 5 1919 he co-founded an air-photo and passenger flight business, "Comte, Mittelholzer, and Co." In 1920 this firm merged with the financially stronger Ad Astra Aero. Mittelholzer was the director and head pilot of Ad Astra Aero which later became Swissair.

He made the first North-South flight across Africa. It took him 77 days. Mittelholzer started in Zürich on December 7, 1926, flying via Alexandria and landing in Cape Town on February 21, 1927. On December 15, 1929 he became the first person to fly over Mt. Kilimanjaro. In 1931, Mittelholzer was appointed technical director of the new airline called Swissair, formed from the merger of Ad Astra Aero and Balair. He died in 1937 in an accident on a climbing expedition in the Hochschwab massive in Styria, Austria.

Among other Swiss air pioneers, he is commemorated in a Swiss postage stamp issued in January 1977.