Who was the first passenger carried by a Wright brothers’ airplane?

Charles Furnas was the first passenger carried by a Wright brothers’ airplane.

Furnas was a mechanic who worked with the Wright brothers. On May 14, 1908, he flew with Wilbur Wright at Huffman Prairie near Dayton, Ohio. The flight made him the first airplane passenger, although he did not control the aircraft.

On the same day, Orville Wright also carried Furnas during a separate flight. The brothers were conducting increasingly ambitious demonstrations as they improved the Flyer and prepared to show that their aircraft could carry more than its pilot.

Charles Furnas is sometimes confused with famous aviation pioneers such as Octave Chanute, who advised the Wrights, or Samuel Langley, whose own aeronautical experiments predated them. Neither was the first passenger in a Wright airplane; that distinction belongs to Furnas.