1910: The Inauguration of an Aircraft Company in Romania Sets the Stage for Several Aviation “Firsts”

June 11, 1910

Cerchez & Co., the first aircraft company in Romania, was formally inaugurated. (At this time, the present-day republic of Romania was still a kingdom.) Cerchez & Co. was located in the town of Chitilia, which is near Romania’s capital and largest city of Bucharest. This company was owned and operated by lawyer and industrialist Mihail Cerchez. The opening of Cerchez & Co. took place less than seven months after it had been registered with the Ministry of Industry and Trade.

On the same day as this company’s inauguration, Cerchez sent a telegram to the Ministry of War requesting the support of the government in building aircraft. This telegram is widely believed to be the first official document involving aeronautics that was issued in Romania. Yet other pioneering claim to fame for Cerchez & Co. is that it had the first aerodrome in Romania.

This company also housed the country’s first flight school. A French aviator named Michel-Paul Molla served as one of the instructors at that school. One of his notable airborne achievements occurred when, while piloting a Farman biplane assembled by Cerchez & Co. on August 25, 1910, he flew over Bucharest. This marked only the second flight of a plane over a major city. (The first such flight had been undertaken about four months earlier, when Émile Dubonnet operated a plane in the skies above Paris.)    

Romanian Army officers were among those who learned how to fly at Cerchez & Co. One of these officers was Ştefan Protopopescu, who received the number one pilot license in Romania and became that army’s first aviator.

Ultimately, though, Cerchez & Co. encountered strong financial headwinds after the Ministry of War began submitting orders for new planes from French aircraft companies instead. The flight school likewise took a huge hit after an exclusively military version of this program was set up in the Bucharest neighborhood of Cotroceni. By the end of 1912, Cerchez declared bankruptcy and shut down his company altogether. The trailblazing legacy of that enterprise, however, continues to be remembered today.

Photo Credit: Public Domain

For more information on Cerchez & Co., please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerchez_%26_Co