Biography
Aurel Vlaicu was born in the village of Binţinţi (now Aurel Vlaicu) near Geoagiu, Transylvania. He attended Calvinist High School in Orăştie (renamed "Liceul Aurel Vlaicu" in his honour in 1919) and took his Baccalaureate in Sibiu in 1902. He furthered his studies at Technical University of Budapest and Technische Hochschule München in Germany, earning his engineer's diploma in 1907.
After working at Opel car factory in Rüsselsheim, he returned to Binţinţi and built a glider he flew in the summer of 1909. Later that year he moved to Bucharest in the Kingdom of Romania, where he began the construction of Vlaicu Nr. I airplane that flew for the first time on June 17, 1910 over Cotroceni airfield.
With his Vlaicu Nr. II model, built in 1911, Aurel Vlaicu won several prizes summing 7,500 Austro-Hungarian krone (for precise landing, projectile throwing and tight flying around a pole) in 1912 at Aspern Air Show near Vienna, where he competed against 42 other aviators of the day, including Roland Garros.
Aurel Vlaicu died on September 13, 1913 near Câmpina while attempting to be the first to cross in flight the Carpathian Mountains in his aged Vlaicu II airplane. He was expected to participate in the ASTRA (Asociaţia Transilvană pentru Literatura Română şi Cultura Poporului Român) festivities in Orastie, near Binţinţi. His body was buried five days later in Bellu cemetery, in Bucharest.
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