Honours and Legacy
Charles Kingsford Smith was Knighted in the 1932 King's Birthday Honours List as a Knight Bachelor. He was knighted on 3 June 1932 by the Australian Governor-General Sir Isaac Isaacs for services to aviation and later was appointed honorary Air Commodore of the Royal Australian Air Force.
The major airport of Sydney, located in the suburb of Mascot was named Kingsford Smith International Airport in his honour. The federal electorate surrounding the airport is named the Division of Kingsford Smith, and includes the suburb of Kingsford.
His most famous aircraft, the Southern Cross, is now preserved and displayed in a purpose-built memorial to Sir Charles Kingsford Smith near the International Terminal at Brisbane Airport. Kingsford Smith sold the plane to the Australian Government in 1935 for £3000 so it could be put on permanent display for the public. The plane was carefully stored for many years before the current memorial was built.
Kingsford Smith Drive in Brisbane passes through the suburb of his birth, Hamilton. Another Kingsford Smith Drive, which is located in the Canberra district of Belconnen, intersects with Southern Cross Drive.
Opened in 2009, Kingsford Smith School in the Canberra suburb of Holt was named after the famous aviator, as was Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith Elementary School in Vancouver, Canada.
He was pictured on the Australian $20 paper note (in circulation from 1966 until 1994, when the $20 polymer note was introduced to replace it) to honour his contribution to aviation and his accomplishments during his life. He was also depicted on the Australian one-dollar coin of 1997, the centenary of his birth.
Albert Park in Suva, where he landed on the trans-Pacific flight, now contains the Kingsford Smith Pavilion.
A memorial stands at Seven Mile Beach (New South Wales) commemorating the first commercial flight to New Zealand.
Qantas named its sixth Airbus A380 (VH-OQF) after Kingsford Smith.
KLM named one of its Boeing 747s (PH-BUM) after Kingsford Smith.
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Famous quotes containing the words honours and/or legacy:
“Vain men delight in telling what Honours have been done them, what great Company they have kept, and the like; by which they plainly confess, that these Honours were more than their Due, and such as their Friends would not believe if they had not been told: Whereas a Man truly proud, thinks the greatest Honours below his Merit, and consequently scorns to boast. I therefore deliver it as a Maxim that whoever desires the Character of a proud Man, ought to conceal his Vanity.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)