Not really - she crashed several aircraft including the Electra she disappeared in. She had under 1000 hours and many of her peers sometimes worried about her not keeping her proficiency up.
Joe, I am only aware of one airplane "crash" and that is when she ground-looped the Electra then those autogiro crashes, two as I recall and that machine had a number of mechanical issues. As to the Electra's "ground-loop" some called it pilot error others that she blew a tire. I can find nothing about her total hours flying though with all the records she set 1000 seems low. Do you have a source for that?
The last part is very true firstly because she grew up in the "fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants" era when aircraft had few instruments and navigation was DR all the way. So she hired people to do the new tech stuff. Her refusal to learn was also in part due to her fame. Everything turned into a photo-op like her one shot at learning to use the Bendix loop DF. She was also kept busy constantly giving lectures all over the country to raise money.
Her "pilot" history begins with her taking lessons at Bert Kinner's airfield on Long Beach Boulevard from Neta Snook on January 3, 1921. Snook gave her lessons in a rebuilt Canuk, the Canadian version of the Curtiss JN4 Jenny, which proved to be to lumbering and slow for Earhart—by summer, she had a bright yellow Kinner Airstar that she called The Canary.
Snook thought Earhart was ready to fly solo after 20 hours of flight training—generally 10 hours were deemed sufficient at the time—but Earhart insisted on having stunt training before flying alone.
She got her U.S. flying license in December 1921. She began participating in public aerial demonstrations and air rodeos. In the fall of 1922, she set an unofficial altitude record for women, flying to 14,000 feet. On March 17, 1923, she received top billing for the air rodeo and opening event at Glendale Airport in Glendale, California.
In 1923, Earhart received her international pilot's license - only the 16th woman to do so - by the world governing body for aeronautics, The Federation Aeronautique. Unfortunately, due to a change in the Earhart family's fortune and her own inability to earn enough to keep the plane, Earhart sold the Airstar in June 1923.
In 1928 she was invited to join pilot Wilmer "Bill" Stultz and co-pilot/mechanic Louis E. "Slim" Gordon as a passenger on their transatlantic flight set to take place a little over a year after Charles Lindbergh's landmark flight—she would be the first woman to fly across the Atlantic. On June 17, 1928, they left Newfoundland in a Fokker F7 and, about 21 hours later, arrived at Burry Port, Wales. The successful flight made headlines across the world. Earhart was just a passenger—in her own words, "a sack of potatoes"—the trip set the stage for Earhart to become a pioneer of aviation and a celebrity. By the end of the year, Putnam had arranged for her first book to be published, titled 20 Hrs. 40 Min., Our Flight in the Friendship: The American Girl, First Across the Atlantic by Air, Tells Her Story.
In August 1929 the Cleveland Air Race, a transcontinental race, was opened to women as a nine-stage race that began in Santa Monica, California, and ended in Cleveland, Ohio. In the Women's Air Derby, dubbed the "Powder Puff Derby" by humorist Will Rogers, Earhart piloted a new Lockheed Vega-1, the heaviest of the planes flown in her class. Due to several mishaps and one fatality, only 16 of the 20 pilots completed the race. Louise Thaden won the Class D race with a Beechcraft Travel Air Speedwing, Gladys O'Donnell came in second with a Waco ATO, and Earhart came in third in her Vega, two hours behind the winner.
Never had so many female pilots spent a significant amount of time together or gotten to know each other so well. Because of the camaraderie and support they felt during the race, Thaden, O'Donnell, Earhart, Ruth Nichols, Blanche Noyes, and Phoebe Omlie gathered to discuss forming an organization for female pilots. All 117 of the women pilots licensed at the time were invited to join. On November 2, 1929, twenty-six women, including Earhart, met at Curtiss Airport in Valley Stream, New York to form the organization now known as the 99s, named for the 99 charter members. Earhart was the first president of the organization.
In 1930, after only 15 minutes of instruction, Earhart became the first woman to fly an autogiro, which featured rotating blades to increase lift and allow short takeoffs and landings. The Pitcairn autogiro was a contender in the safe-to-fly/no-stall airplane movement to attract more civilian pilots. On April 8, 1931, Earhart set an altitude record in a Pitcairn autogiro that would stand for years. She was sponsored by Beech-Nut company in an attempt to be the first pilot to fly an autogiro from coast to coast, but discovered on arrival that another pilot had accomplished the feat a week before. She decided to attempt to be the first to complete the first transcontinental round-trip flight in an autogiro, but crashed after taking off at Abilene, Texas, on the return leg of the trip, for which she received a reprimand for negligence from Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aviation Clarence Young. Although she completed the trip in a new autogiro, she abandoned the rotorcraft after several other mishaps.
To dispel rumors that Earhart was not a skilled pilot but merely a publicity figure created by Putnam, they began planning a solo transatlantic flight from Harbor Grace, Newfoundland, to Paris, which would make her the first female and second person to fly solo across the Atlantic. Earhart took off May 20, 1932, in her Lockheed DL-1—five years to the day after Lindbergh began his historic flight. Mechanical problems and adverse weather forced Earhart to land in a pasture near Londonderry, Ireland, rather than Paris, but her achievement was undeniable. The National Geographic Society awarded her a
gold medal, presented by President Herbert Hoover, and Congress award her a
Distinguished Flying Cross—both awarded to a woman for the first time.
Earhart continued to set records and achieve firsts for females in aviation. In August 1932, she became the first woman to fly nonstop coast-to-coast across the continental United States in her Lockheed Vega. She had the fastest nonstop transcontinental flight by a woman in 1932. In 1933, she was one of two women to enter the Bendix race from Cleveland, Ohio, to Los Angeles, California, which officials had opened to women, allowing them to compete against men in the same race for the first time. Although she crossed the finish line six hours behind the men, on her return flight, she beat the nonstop transcontinental flight record she set the previous year by two hours.
Earhart received many awards and accolades for her record-setting achievements. She won the Harmon Trophy as America's Outstanding Airwoman for 1932, 1933, and 1934. She was given honorary membership in the National Aeronautic Association and was awarded the Cross of Knight of the Legion of Honor by the French government.
She also worked with Paul Mantz, a Hollywood stunt pilot and technical advisor, to prepare for a new record flight from Hawaii to California as the first person to fly solo across the Pacific. She received FCC approval to install a two-way radio in her Hi-Speed Special 5C Lockheed Vega—the first in a civilian aircraft.
The Vega was shipped to Honolulu, Hawaii, in late December and on January 11, 1935, Earhart took off from Wheeler Army Airfield near Honolulu. A little over 18 hours later, she landed in Oakland, California, after an uneventful flight.
Hoping to break another record, in April 1935 she became the first person to fly solo from Los Angeles, California, to Mexico by official invitation from the Mexican Government, but became lost 60 miles from her ultimate goal of Mexico City and had to stop for directions. In May, she set a record traveling nonstop from Mexico City to Newark, New Jersey, arriving in just over 14 hours. In August 1935, she flew in the Bendix race again, this time with Mantz, and placed fifth, winning $500.
There have been more than a few (some of the armchair variety) critics who have criticized and rebuked Amelia's flying skills. Let them try flying a heavy, noisy airplane with crude autopilot capabilities for some 10 to 20 hours at a stretch, over vast oceans, hostile unexplored deserts and mountains, through monsoon rains of unimaginable intensities, with virtually no radio navigation aids to help find your way, with no decent charts for visual reference.
Personally I have problems tolerating a 12-hour flight in luxuriously pampered cushy comfort on a 747! So it is difficult for me to criticize her pilot skills. She had managed to successfully fly from Miami to Lae. HOWEVER piloting skills and radio skills are two distinct and separate endeavors. The former has been aptly demonstrated, but the latter has from time to time come under sharp criticism. From people who knew her personally:
ART KENNEDY: "I think that a lot of the questions about her lack of using the radio correctly is because she would not learn how it worked or how to properly operate it. To me she had no real knowledge of what any radio could do. Kennedy believed that Earhart's cavalier attitude toward radios led to her undoing. "In her unique fashion Earhart was quite a lady, although it is well known that she punctuated her airport conversation with a spectacular lexicon of aviation vulgarities," Kennedy wrote. "This was especially the case when she had trouble contacting the tower, because she was notoriously lazy about learning how to use the radio properly. She would get so frustrated that her language became unprintable and Burbank tower operators often found it necessary to reprimand her. That failure to learn radio procedures may be significant in light of the apparently frantic transmissions before she disappeared. I remember Paul Mantz telling her that she must be up to speed on frequencies for daylight and night transmissions, but she just nodded and said, "#%*$¢! I will just turn the knobs until I get what I want.'"
PAUL RAFFORD JR.: Paul tells the story of how his PAN AM Division Radio Engineer met with AE at Miami to discuss radio and suggested several possible changes to increase safety and better radio capability. To his surprise and chagrin Amelia brushed him off with, "I don't need that! I've got a navigator to tell me where I am!"