Aerospace Advocate: GE’s Darby Becker Takes the Helm at the Aero Club of Washington, the Oldest of Its Kind

Back in 1909, the idea of a powered flying machine was seen as a pipe dream. Orville Wright had just been injured in a plane crash, providing further evidence, skeptics said, that the Wright brothers’ achievement at Kitty Hawk six years earlier was a fluke. But a group of Wright supporters, including military officials, thought otherwise, and decided to establish an organization to further the future of aviation: the Aero Club of Washington.