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The Aviation Portal

A Boeing 747 in 1978 operated by Pan Am

Aviation includes the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. Aircraft includes fixed-wing and rotary-wing types, morphable wings, wing-less lifting bodies, as well as lighter-than-air aircraft such as hot air balloons and airships.

Aviation began in the 18th century with the development of the hot air balloon, an apparatus capable of atmospheric displacement through buoyancy. Clément Ader built the "Ader Éole" in France and made an uncontrolled, powered hop in 1890. This was the first powered aircraft, although it did not achieve controlled flight. Some of the most significant advancements in aviation technology came with the controlled gliding flying of Otto Lilienthal in 1896; then a large step in significance came with the construction of the first powered airplane by the Wright brothers in the early 1900s. Since that time, aviation has been technologically revolutionized by the introduction of the jet which permitted a major form of transport throughout the world. (Full article...)

Selected article

British Airways Boeing 747-400 taking off at Heathrow Airport in October 2007
British Airways Boeing 747-400 taking off at Heathrow Airport in October 2007
British Airways is the flag carrier airline of the United Kingdom and its largest airline based on fleet size, international flights and international destinations. When measured by passengers carried it is second-largest, behind easyJet. The airline is based in Waterside near its main hub at London Heathrow Airport. A British Airways Board was established by the United Kingdom government in 1972 to manage the two nationalised airline corporations, British Overseas Airways Corporation and British European Airways, and two smaller, regional airlines, Cambrian Airways, from Cardiff, and Northeast Airlines, from Newcastle upon Tyne. On 31 March 1974, all four companies were merged to form British Airways. After almost 13 years as a state company, British Airways was privatised in February 1987 as part of a wider privatisation plan by the Conservative government. The carrier soon expanded with the acquisition of British Caledonian in 1987, Dan-Air in 1992 and British Midland International in 2012. British Airways is a founding member of the Oneworld airline alliance, along with American Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Qantas, and the now defunct Canadian Airlines. The alliance has since grown to become the third-largest, after SkyTeam and Star Alliance. British Airways merged with Iberia on 21 January 2011, formally creating the International Airlines Group (IAG), the world's third-largest airline group in terms of annual revenue and the second-largest in Europe. (Full article...)

Selected image

Su-27 from Russian Knights aerobatic team on landing, Kubinka

Did you know

...that George H. W. Bush flew a TBF Avenger while he was in the U.S. Navy? ...that the Zagreb mid-air collision over Croatia in 1976 was one of the deadliest mid-air collisions? ... that Walter Borchers was one of three brothers, all three received the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross during World War II?

More Did you know facts

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The following are images from various aviation-related articles on Wikipedia.

In the news

Wikinews Aviation portal
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Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

Selected biography

Wiley Hardeman Post (November 22, 1898 – August 15, 1935) was the first pilot to fly solo around the world. Also known for his work in high altitude flying, Post helped develop one of the first pressure suits. His plywood aircraft, the Winnie Mae[1] is on display at the National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, VA, and his pressure suit is being prepared for display at the same location. On August 15, 1935, Post and American humorist Will Rogers were killed when Post's plane crashed on takeoff from a lagoon near Point Barrow, Alaska.

Selected Aircraft

The Airbus A340 is a long-range four-engined widebody commercial passenger airplane manufactured by Airbus. The latest variants (-600 & A340E) competed with Boeing's 777 series of aircraft on long-haul and ultra long-haul routes, but it has since been succeeded by the Airbus A350.

The A340-600 flies 380 passengers in a three-class cabin layout (419 in 2 class) over 7,500 nautical miles (13,900 km). It provides similar passenger capacity to a 747 but with twice the cargo volume, and at lower trip and seat costs.

The A340-600 is more than 10 m longer than a basic -300, making it the second longest airliner in the world, more than four meters longer than a Boeing 747-400.

  • Span: 63.45 m (208 ft 2 in)
  • Length: 75.30 m n(246 ft 11 in)
  • Height: 17.30 m (56 ft 9 in)
  • Engines: four 56,000 lbf (249 kN) thrust Rolls-Royce Trent 556 turbofans
  • Cruising Speed: Mach 0.83 (885 km/h, 550 mph)
  • First Flight: October 25, 1991
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Today in Aviation

May 2

  • 2011 – Operation Neptune Spear. 2 modified Black Hawk helicopters ("stealth" versions) carrying Navy seals lands in at Abbottabad, Pakistan, and kill Terrorist Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Lade, founder of al-Qaeda, the terrorist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets.
  • 2010 – A Boeing AH-64 Apache helicopter of the United States Army carrying two soldiers of the 116th Aviation Group, was participating in a routine drill when it crashed on a ramp while taxiing at McEntire Joint National Guard Base, South Carolina, shortly before 1400 hrs. Both crew were taken to hospital. Pilot 1st Lt. Jonathan Shively Jr., 33, of Jamestown, died of injuries, but second pilot, Chief Warrant Officer Roger Carpenter, 46, of Spartanburg, was in stable condition.
  • 2009 – Uli Dembinski, German aerobatic pilot, establishes a record of 333 loops with his Yak-55.
  • 2005 – Two F/A-18C Block 39/40 Hornet fighter jets of VMFA-323, BuNos 164721 and 164732, collide over south-central Iraq, during a sortie from USS Carl Vinson, killing the two pilots.[3]
  • 1999 – The same day an American F-16 was shot down near Šabac and an A-10 Thunderbolt II was heavily damaged, operation control lost contact of an UAV in the Adriatic Sea, close to the coast and minutes from landing. Local fishermen witnesses give credit to the rumors this was a covered Dassault Mirage F1B (codename yogsothoth) damaged in dogfight over Beograd. Reports of airplane discharging something at sea were collected by coast guard, as well as the bail out of two pilots. Following the accident, never credited by the air force, it was confirmed that jet fighters were dropping unused weapons into the sea before landing.
  • 1998 – The 100th and final B-1 B was delivered.
  • 1981 – A 55-year-old Australian man, Laurence James Downey, enters a lavatory aboard Aer Lingus Flight 164, a Boeing 737-200 with 107 other people on board, five minutes before landing at London Heathrow Airport in London, England, douses himself with petrol (gasoline), and walks into the cockpit with a cigarette lighter in his hand. He demands that the airliner fly to Iran, then specifies France when the flight crew tells him that the aircraft lacks the fuel to fly to Iran. The plane lands at Le Touquet – Côte d'Opale Airport in Le Touquet, France, where Downey demands that Pope John Paul II make public the Third Secret of Fatima. After 10 hours, French police storm the plane and arrest Downey without injury to anyone.
  • 1975 – Death of Emil Meinecke, German WWI flying ace and Fokker test pilot post WWI.
  • 1970 – ALM Flight 980, a Douglas DC-9 operated by Overseas National Airways, ditches near St. Croix, Virgin Islands, killing 23, including two infants and one crew member; 40, including 4 crew members, survive.
  • 1968 – Death of Edwin Charles "Ted" Parsons, American former French Foreign Legionnaire, WWI flying ace, Rear Admiral of the US Navy, Hollywood aviation technical advisor, FBI Special Agent, and author.
  • 1967 – Delivery to the USAF of the A-37 A and named Dragonfly begins.
  • 1964 – A North Vietnamese frogman sinks the U. S. Navy aviation transport USS Card (T-AKV-40) – formerly the escort aircraft carrier USNS Card (CVE-11) – pierside while she unloads helicopters at Saigon, South Vietnam. She soon is refloated and repaired.
  • 1958 – Roger Carpentier beats Watkin's two-week-old world altitude record when he flies to 79,452 feet in a Sud-Ouest SO 9050 in Istres, France.
  • 1956 – A USAF Boeing B-47E-85-BW Stratojet, 52-0450, c/n 450732, of the 98th Bomb Wing (also reported as of the 372d Bomb Squadron, 307th Bomb Wing), crashes short of runway, Lincoln AFB, Nebraska. One account states that it was on instrument approach. Another states that it came down "three miles short of the Northwest runway after departing on an evening training mission. Eyewitnesses said the plane appeared to be trying to belly in for a landing, crashed, then exploded and burned. The crash site was on farmland owned by Edmund Nelson, ½ mile west of 79 Hi-way and 2 ½ miles north of U.S. 34." KWF are Captain Marion J. Perdue, aircraft commander, 33, San Antonio, Texas; 2nd Lieutenant Linwood M. McIntosh, co-pilot, 22, Dallas, Texas; Captain Charles H. Stonesifer, navigator/bombardier, 35, Maricopa, California; and Staff Sergeant William F. Rockholt, crew chief, 24, Fellows, California. All crew were from the 345th Bomb Squadron.
  • 1945 – Death of Eric James Brindley Nicolson, British WWII fighter pilot, only Battle of Britain pilot and the only pilot of RAF Fighter Command to be awarded the Victoria Cross, killed in the crash of a RAF B-24 Liberator in which he was flying as an observer.
  • 1945 – The British East Indies Fleet's 2first Aircraft Carrier Squadron – consisting of the aircraft carriers HMS Emperor, HMS Hunter, HMS Khedive, and HMS Stalker – begin support of Operation Dracula, a British assault on Rangoon, Burma. Their aircraft fly 110 sorties, bombing Japanese forces in support of a British amphibious landing.
  • 1942 – The Japanese seaplane carrier Mizuho sinks with the loss of 101 lives after the U. S. Navy submarine USS Drum (SS-228) had torpedoed her late the previous evening 40 nautical miles (74 km) off Omaezaki, Japan. There are 472 survivors.
  • 1941 – The Anglo-Iraqi War between British forces and a pro-Axis Iraqi government begins with 41 Royal Air Force Station Habbaniya- and Shaibah-based Royal Air Force planes launching a surprise attack against Iraqi forces surrounding Habbaniya and Iraqi airfields. Royal Iraqi Air Force aircraft respond. By the end of the day, the British have destroyed 22 Iraqi aircraft on the ground, losing five of their own.
  • 1936 – American parachutist, Clement Joseph 'Clem' Sohn, makes his first jump in England, at Hanworth airfield near London. Unusually, Sohn attached wings to his body, which were deployed when he opened his arms and legs and allowed him to glide.
  • 1932 – Death of Otto Jindra, Austro Hungarian WWI flying ace who, post war, became Czechoslovakian citizen and was instrumental in raising a Czechoslovak Air Force.
  • 1927 – Herbert Arthur "Bert" Dargue, leading the U. S. Army Pan American Flight, a public relations goodwill mission to promote U. S. aviation in South America, Flying 5 Loening OA-1 A seaplanes complete the mission after having traveled 22,000 miles (35,200 km) in 59 flight days, stopping at 72 cities along the route.
  • 1919 – A U.S. Army seaplane en route on afternoon flight from Balboa, Panama to France Field, near present-day Colón, Panama, with three aviators on board, suffers engine failure shortly after departure. Pilot Lt. J. R. L. Hitt attempts landing on Miraflores Lake but aircraft falls short and hits the front of the Miraflores Locks of the Panama Canal at ~1700 hrs. Airframe crumples "like a house of cards", according to account published by the Panama Star & Herald on 3 May. Hitt, Lt. Thomas Cecil Tonkin, and Maj. Harold Melville Clark (4 October 1890 - 2 May 1919) are all thrown from the plane into the water of the lock. "Lieutenant Tonkin was undoubtedly killed instantly by the twisting timbers of the machine. ...Major Clark sank to the bottom of the lock, and it's not known whether he was killed in the crash or whether he drowned", stated the article. Hitt was severely injured in the crash, but was rescued by bystanders. The Panama Star & Herald reported that a diver was sent to retrieve Clark's body. The Army rules his death as an accident due to internal injuries caused by "aeroplane traumatism", according to a War Department report on Clark's death dated 8 May 1919, and awards his mother $10,000. Clark is buried 29 May 1919, with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. Clark had made the first-ever inter-island flight in the Hawaiian Islands on 15 March 1918, in a Curtiss N-9 of the 6th Aero Squadron. Fort Stotsenburg, established in the Philippines in 1902, is renamed Clark Air Base with the establishment of the U.S. Air Force in 1947.
  • 1918 – Death of Edgar Scholtz, German WWI flying ace, Killed in action in his Fokker DR. I
  • 1918 – Death of Federico Fenu, Italian Balloonist.
  • 1917 – Camp Borden Aerodrome was formally taken over by RFC Canada – The first of the new training fields.
  • 1916 – Eight German Zeppelins raid the east coast of England, causing 39 casualties. The Zeppelin L 20 is wrecked in a storm off Stavanger, Norway on the return journey.
  • 1909 – John Moore-Brabazon the first resident British citizen to make a recognized powered heavier-than-air flight in the UK, flying from The Aero Club's ground at Leysdown on the Isle of Sheppey in his Voisin biplane Bird of Passage.
  • 1895 – Birth of Orvil Arson Anderson, American pioneer balloonist.
  • 1892 – Born Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen, was a German pilot and is still regarded today as the "ace of aces". He was a very successful fighter pilot, military leader and flying ace who won 80 air combats during World War I.
  • 1891 – Birth of General Sir Hesperus Andrias 'Pierre' van Ryneveld, South African military commander, WWI fighter ace, raid pilot and WWII high-ranking officer.
  • 1883 – Birth of Alessandro Cagno (nickname Sandrin), Italian racing driver and aviation pioneer.

References

  1. ^ Winnie Mae
  2. ^ "Engine fault 'caused Sudan crash'". BBC News, 3 May 2008. Retrieved 22 October 2012.
  3. ^ "Second Pilot Identified in F/A-18 Crash". United States Navy. 2007-05-05. Retrieved 2007-12-10.
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