Joan Lily Amelia Hughes, MBE was a World War II ferry pilot and one of Britain's first female test pilots. She was considered a capable instructor and flew everything except flying boats.

The Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) was a British civilian organisation set up at the start of the Second World War with headquarters at White Waltham Airfield in Berkshire. The ATA ferried new, repaired and damaged military aircraft between factories, assembly plants, transatlantic delivery points, maintenance units (MUs), scrapyards, and active service squadrons and airfields, but not to naval aircraft carriers. It also flew service personnel on urgent duty from one place to another and performed some air ambulance work. Notably, around 10% of its pilots were women, and from 1943 they received equal pay to their male colleagues, a first for the British government.