His aviation students learned the intricacies of navigating by the sun and stars, as well as how to determine and apply drift over the ocean. For many aviators at that time, it was a hand-to-mouth existence. Those who were unable to pay helped Gatty to gain flight experience, since he accepted informal flying lessons in lieu of his fees.

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Gatty eventually collaborated with Lt. Cmdr. Philip Charles Weems, a brilliant U.S. naval officer who had a navigation school in San Diego that taught the use of precalculated position lines called Weems curves. That technique had been used by Lindbergh, as well as by Admiral Richard Byrd and Hubert Wilkins on their polar flights. Gatty and Weems had much in common and enjoyed working together. The system they developed led to Weems' generously declaring that Gatty 'has done more practical work on celestial navigation than any other person in the world today.'

Weems also enlisted Gatty as an instructor, so in addition to running his own school, the Australian drove regularly to San Diego to teach. When Weems was assigned as a navigation instructor at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Gatty became manager of the San Diego school.

In addition to his teaching and navigational skills, Gatty was a prolific inventor. His first invention was an air sextant that used a spirit level to provide an artificial horizon. Next he produced an 'aerochronometer' that offset the inaccuracies that aircraft speed produced when a flier was taking a navigational observation. His most important contribution, however, was the Gatty drift sight, which he refined into a superb ground speed and drift indicator widely used by airmen during the late 1930s and eventually sold to the U.S. Army Air Corps.

In 1929 Gatty was approached by Roscoe Turner, then the operations manager for tiny Nevada Airlines, which operated Lockheed Vega monoplanes between Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Reno. To help promote the company as 'the fastest airline in the world,' Turner was planning a flight between Los Angeles and New York, intended to prove the feasibility of a fast intercontinental passenger service.

Turner asked Gatty to lay out a course for the flight and accompany him as the Vega's navigator. Also on board were three passengers, a turtle and a lucky teddy bear. Turner and Gatty made four refueling stops on the 2,520-mile flight and, despite strong headwinds on the last two legs, completed the flight in 19 hours 53 minutes. Although their time was a couple of hours outside the existing coast-to-coast record set by Frank Hawks in a Lockheed Air Express, Turner claimed a new record for a commercial airliner.

The next would-be record breaker to approach Gatty was Canadian-born Harold Bromley, who until recently had been flying for a small Mexican airline. A former Royal Flying Corps pilot, Bromley dreamed of emulating Lindbergh. Instead of the Atlantic, however, he wanted to be the first to fly nonstop across the Pacific. Like Lindbergh, who named his plane for his St. Louis sponsors, Bromley's City of Tacoma recognized his backers—Tacoma, Wash., lumber tycoon John Buffelen and the city's chamber of commerce. Aware of the immense publicity generated by Lindbergh's flight, they were confident that Bromley would put their little city on the map.

Following Lindbergh's epochal Atlantic crossing, the Japanese had mounted an all-out mission to fly the Pacific in a purpose-built Kawanishi K-12 monoplane christened Sakura (cherry blossom). Modeled roughly on Lindbergh's Ryan Spirit of St Louis, but much larger, Kawanishi's flawed design was based on the theory that greater size would produce the range required for the 4,700-mile transpacific route—1,100 miles more than Lindbergh's New York–Paris flight. The Japanese attempt ended in July 1928, when test flights disclosed that, fully loaded with fuel, the K-12 exceeded its safe design weight limit, could not meet minimum climb requirements and had a range of only 3,782 miles. Kawanishi hung the expensive white elephant over its assembly shop. Attached was a sign proclaiming 'How not to design or build a special-purpose airplane.'

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