Spirit of St. Louis

Spirit of St. Louis Ryan NYP
The Spirit at the National Air and Space Museum
Role	Long-range aircraft [for record attempt] Type of aircraft
Manufacturer	Ryan Airlines
Designer	Donald A. Hall
First flight	April 28, 1927
Retired	April 30, 1928
Produced	1927
Number built	1 (not including later replicas and reproductions)
Developed from	Ryan M-2
Career
Registration	N-X-211
Owners and operators	Charles Lindbergh
Flights	174
Total hours	489 hours, 28 minutes
Preserved at	National Air and Space Museum

The Spirit of St. Louis (formally the Ryan NYP, registration: N-X-211) is the custom-built, single-engine, single-seat, high-wing monoplane that was flown by Charles Lindbergh on May 20–21, 1927, on the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight from Long Island, New York, to Paris, France, for which Lindbergh won the $25,000 Orteig Prize.^[1]

Lindbergh took off in the Spirit from Roosevelt Airfield, Garden City, New York, and landed 33 hours, 30 minutes later at Aéroport Le Bourget in Paris, France, a distance of approximately 3,600 miles (5,800 km).^[2] He also flew this aircraft on numerous occasions, delivering mail in and out of the United States. One of the best-known aircraft in the world, the Spirit was built by Ryan Airlines in San Diego, California, owned and operated at the time by Benjamin Franklin Mahoney, who had purchased it from its founder, T. Claude Ryan, in 1926. The Spirit is on permanent display at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., but the exhibit, Pioneers of Flight, is closed for renovations until 2026.^[3]