According to the written account given by Gomá, on 17th June 1928 three Avro Avian planes with 76 CV Engines left from the Croydon aerodrome in London, with the object of completing a “Tour of Europe”. Of these three, one was piloted by Carlos Haya, carrying as passenger and observer his friend Alvaro García Ogara. Another was piloted by the Marquis of Cordoba and the third was manned by Captain Alfredo Gutierrez and the Marquis of Navarrete. On the 18th of that month they flew from Paris to Biarritz via Tours and Bordeaux, reaching Madrid on the 19th after passing through Vitoria.
The Avro Avian plane travelled at an average speed of 120 km/h with a fuel consumption of 30 litres of oil per 500 kilometres. The tank contained 100 litres of petrol and an extra 80 litre supply.
In Madrid, Haya and Ogara applied for and obtained the permits required to make the round Europe flight, finally managing to take off for Barcelona on 27th July 1928. It took them few days to complete the stages Barcelona, Marseilles, Nice, Pisa and Rome, where they arrived on 1st August. The following stages took them to Naples, Brindisi, Salonica and they reached Constantinople-Istambul, where they were delayed for eight days by official paperwork.
On the 18th of August they flew to Sofia, Belgrade and on the 20th they reached Budapest, continuing on to Vienna and Prague and Berlin-Dessau on the 24th. Here they visited the Junkers factory. The story goes that Carlos de Haya, who was also a magnificent aerobatics performer, gave an astounding exhibition over Templehof airport which thrilled the spectators, although when he touched down the authorities, true to typically German mentality, fined him for breaching a law forbidding aerobatic displays at that airfield. On the 1st of September, they were in Amsterdam, on the 2nd in London-Kenley, on the 7th in Paris, the 8th in Tours and on the 9th they reached Biarritz and Bilbao, landing on Algorta beach. On the 14th September they were back in Madrid, having covered nearly 9,000 kilometres and during the whole mammoth exploit the only slight setback they suffered was a problem with an exhaust pipe, which forced them to make a stopover in Biarritz before reaching Bilbao.
In Sofia a committee had gone out to welcome them, carrying Spanish 16th Century flags and enquiring about the Catholic kings. We suppose that the insignias would have been of the 15th century or that perhaps their enquiries might have been regarding the Spanish monarch on the throne at that time, Alfonso XIII.
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