Portuguese aviator. He was also a navy officer, geographer, cartographer and historian. An aviation pioneer, Gago Coutinho alongside Sacadura Cabral, were the first to cross the South Atlantic Ocean by air, from March 30 to June 17, 1922, from Lisbon, Portugal, to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In June 2022, the centenary of the first aerial crossing of the South Atlantic, it was announced that Faro Airport would officially change its name to Gago Coutinho Airport, which was effective on September 7, 2022. Born Carlos Viegas Gago Coutinho into a modest family, he finished high school in 1885, and entered the Polytechnic School, where he studied for one year, as preparation for his entrance at the Naval School, in Alfeite, Almada, in 1886. He joined the Navy in 1886 as an aspirant. In 1890, he was promoted to marine guard, in 1891 to second lieutenant, and in 1895 to first lieutenant. In 1907 he was promoted to captain-lieutenant and in 1915 to captain-of-frigate. In 1920 he became captain of sea-and-war. In 1922 he was promoted to vice-admiral, and in 1958 to admiral. During his first Navy years, he did several travels, being the first in the corvette "Afonso de Albuquerque", from December 7, 1888 to January 16, 1891, where he traveled to Mozambique as a member of the Naval Division of Eastern Africa. He did several naval travels the following years, until March 31, 1898, when he did his first commission as an overseas geographer, in Portuguese Timor. Since March 1898, Gago Coutinho's activities were developed mostly at the Cartography Commission, created in 1883. From July 27, 1898 to April 19, 1899, he was involved in field work, working at the delimitation of the borders and at the survey of the geographical chart of the most remote Portuguese colony. After his return to Portugal, he was assigned to work at the delimitation of the borders of Niassa territory in Mozambique, from September 5, 1900 to February 28, 1901. He then moved to Angola, where he worked at the delimitation of Noqui's borders, until the end of 1901. He returned to Mozambique, working for the borders delimitation in Tete district, between February 27, 1904 and December 18, 1905. Gago Coutinho was nominated head of the Geodesical Mission of Eastern Africa in May 1907, a post he held until the beginning of 1911. It was during his assignment that he met Portuguese aviator pioneer Artur de Sacadura Cabral, who become his close friend and who would be his mentor for future aviation projects. Afterwards, he led the Portuguese mission that delimited Angola borders in Barotze, which was formed in 1912. The year after his return to Portugal, he was nominated the head of the Geodesical Mission of São Tomé and Príncipe, in 1915, which he was until middle 1919. In 1917, Gago Coutinho and Sacadura Cabral performed their first flights together. In 1919, encouraged by his friend, he started to dedicate himself to the improvement of the aerial navigation methods. They took several flights together to study the methods, the most important was the first flight from Lisbon to Funchal, Madeira, in 1919. Sacadura Cabral had already delineated by then the project of making the first aerial crossing of the South Atlantic, meant to take place in 1922, the year of the centennial of the independence of Brazil. The Fairey IIIB seaplane named "Lusitânia" used by Gago Coutinho and Sacadura Cabral for their transatlantic flight did not have enough fuel capacity to make the entire trip unaided so various stops were made along the way and the aviators were shadowed by a support ship, the República. On the journey down the Brazilian coast a heavy rain storm caused the aircraft's engine to fail and the aviators were forced to ditch in the ocean. Realizing that something was wrong, the República sent out a distress signal asking other ships in the area to look out for the seaplane. After some time in the water, the aviators were found by a British freighter. The Paris City of the Reardon Smith Line, under Captain A.E. Tamlyn, en route from Cardiff to Rio, rescued Coutinho and Cabral. The aviators were then carried to the Brazilian Fernando de Noronha islands. Enthusiastic Portuguese and Brazilian public opinion about the flight led the Portuguese government to send another Fairey III seaplane to complete the journey. The new plane, baptised "Pátria", arrived at Fernando de Noronha on May 6. After being refitted, the Pátria departed on May 11 with Coutinho and Cabral on board. They flew to the Saint Peter and Saint Paul Archipelago to resume the journey at the point where it had been interrupted. However, an engine problem forced them to once again make an emergency ditching in the middle of the ocean, where they drifted for nine hours until being saved by the nearby British cargo ship Paris City, which carried them back to Fernando Noronha. A third Fairey III – baptised "Santa Cruz" by the wife of Epitácio Pessoa, the President of Brazil – was sent out, carried by the cruiser NRP Carvalho Araújo. On June 5, the Santa Cruz was put in the waters of Fernando de Noronha and Coutinho and Cabral resumed their journey, flying to Recife, then to Salvador da Bahia, then to Vitória and from there to Rio de Janeiro, where they arrived on June 17, 1922, ditching in the Guanabara Bay. The two men were received as heroes by huge crowds, and were greeted by the aviation pioneer Alberto Santos-Dumont. Although their journey had lasted 79 days, the actual flight time was just 62 hours and 26 minutes. The aircraft, the only of the three that survived until today, is now on display at the Maritime Museum in Lisbon, Portugal. A commemorative painting of the rescue was made by the Portuguese painter and cartoonist José Stuart Carvalhais. Gago Coutinho also invented a type of sextant incorporating two spirit levels to provide an artificial horizon. This adaptation of the traditional marine sextant allowed navigation without visual reference to the real horizon. He also invented an optical flight instrument, to be mounted on the plane's cockpit floor, which measures leeway in flight whenever ground remains visible. He also He dedicated himself to the nautical history of the Portuguese Discoveries after 1924. His vast body of work later would be published in "A Náutica dos Descobrimentos" ("The Nautical of the Discoveries") (1951–1952), in two volumes. He died in the Navy Hospital, in Lisbon, a day after his 90th birthday. He never married or had children.