Winifred Joyce “Winnie” Drinkwater was a pioneering Scottish aviator and aeroplane engineer.

Drinkwater joined the Scottish Flying Club near Renfrew on 2 June 1930. She trained under Captain John Houston, an instructor at the club. When she qualified for her private pilot’s licence later that year she became Scotland’s youngest pilot.

On 8 May 1932, aged 19, she gained her “B” (commercial) license at Cinque Ports Flying Club at Lympne in Kent, making her the youngest professional pilot in the United Kingdom and the world’s first female commercial pilot. Drinkwater also gained her instructor’s certificate later in 1932, and her ground engineer licence in 1933.

In 1933 Drinkwater was employed by John Cuthill Sword, the owner of Midland & Scottish Air Ferries as a commercial pilot. She made her first scheduled flight from Renfrew Aerodrome to Campbeltown on 27 April 1933 in a de Havilland Fox Moth biplane. Later she flew scheduled flights from Glasgow to London in a de Havilland Dragon.

Some of her charter work with the airline included delivery of newspapers to the Scottish islands, press assignments including flying photographers over Loch Ness as they searched for the Loch Ness monster, air ambulance work on the Western Isles and undertaking an air search for a boat of kidnappers.

According to the Internet