The Grande Semaine d'Aviation de la Champagne, held near Reims in 1909, was one of the first major international aviation meetings. Pilots, machines, prizes, crowds, and newspapers turned flight into mass spectacle. The event helped aviation become a public sport, industry, and cultural fascination.

Air meetings supplied poets and journalists with images of crowds gazing upward at fragile machines. They also helped establish the modern aviator as hero-performer, a figure central to pre-war prose, verse, and visual art.