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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 is 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

Flight 11 flightpath
Flight 11 flightpath
American Airlines Flight 11 was a scheduled U.S. domestic passenger flight from Logan International Airport in Boston, Massachusetts, to Los Angeles International Airport. It was hijacked by five men and deliberately crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City as part of the September 11, 2001, attacks. Fifteen minutes into the flight, the hijackers injured at least three people, forcefully breached the cockpit, and overpowered the pilot and first officer. Mohamed Atta, who was a known member of al-Qaeda, and trained as a pilot, took over the controls. Air traffic controllers noticed the flight was in distress when the crew stopped responding to them. They realized the flight had been hijacked when Atta mistakenly transmitted announcements to air traffic control. On board, two flight attendants contacted American Airlines, and provided information about the hijackers and injuries to passengers and crew.

The aircraft crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 08:46 local time; the impact killed all 92 people aboard, including the hijackers. Many people in the streets witnessed the collision, and Jules Naudet captured the impact on video. News agencies began to report on the incident soon after and speculated that the crash had been an accident. The impact and subsequent fire caused the North Tower to collapse, which resulted in thousands of additional casualties. During the recovery effort at the World Trade Center site, workers recovered and identified dozens of remains from Flight 11 victims, but many other body fragments could not be identified. (Full article...)

Selected image

RAAF General Dynamics F-111 aircraft performing a dump-and-burn fuel dump. Avalon, Victoria, Australia.

Did you know

...that Chris Phatswe committed suicide by crashing his Air Botswana plane into two other planes belonging to the airline, effectively crippling operations? ...that Berlin Airlift "Candy Bomber" Gail Halvorsen would wiggle the wings of his plane to identify himself to children below? ... that in the middle of building Fagernes Airport, Leirin, the authorities changed their minds and gave the airport more than twice the runway length?

More Did you know facts

General images - load new batch

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

In the news

Wikinews Aviation portal
Read and edit Wikinews

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

Douglas Dakota DC-3 (G-ANAF) of the Air Atlantique Historic Flight.
Douglas Dakota DC-3 (G-ANAF) of the Air Atlantique Historic Flight.

The Douglas DC-3 is a fixed-wing, propeller-driven aircraft which revolutionized air transport in the 1930s and 1940s, and is generally regarded as one of the most significant transport aircraft ever made.

The DC-3 was engineered by a team led by chief engineer Arthur E. Raymond and first flew on December 17, 1935 (the 32nd. anniversary of the Wright Brothers flight at Kitty Hawk). The plane was the result of a marathon phone call from American Airlines CEO C.R. Smith demanding improvements in the design of the DC-2. The amenities of the DC-3 (including sleeping berths on early models and an in-flight kitchen) popularized air travel in the United States. With just one refuelling stop, transcontinental flights across America became possible. Before the DC-3, such a trip would entail short hops in commuter aircraft during the day coupled with train travel overnight.

During World War II, many civilian DC-3s were drafted for the war effort and thousands of military versions of the DC-3 were built under the designations C-47, C-53, R4D, and Dakota. The armed forces of many countries used the DC-3 and its military variants for the transport of troops, cargo and wounded. Over 10,000 aircraft were produced (some as licensed copies in Japan as Showa L2D, and in the USSR as the Lisunov Li-2).

  • Span: 95 ft (28.96 m)
  • Length: 64 ft 5 in (19.65 m)
  • Height: 16 ft 11 in (5.16 m)
  • Engines: 2× Pratt & Whitney Twin Wasp S1C3G 14-cylinder radial engines, 1,200 hp (895 kW) or Wright Cyclone
  • Cruising Speed: 170 mph (274 km/h)
  • First Flight:December 17, 1935
  • Number built: 13,140 (including license built types)

Today in Aviation

December 25

  • 2012 – An Antonov An-72 military transport aircraft belonging to the military forces of Kazakhstan carrying a crew of seven and 20 members of the Kazakhstan Border Guard Service crashes in bad weather about 20 km (12 miles) from Shymkent while descending to a landing there after a domestic flight from Astana, killing everyone on board. The acting Director of the Kazakhstan Border Guard Service, Colonel Turganbeck Stambekov, is among the dead, along with one of his deputies and a number of regional Border Guard commanders.[3][4]
  • 2009 – Northwest Airlines Flight 253, an Airbus A330-300 is attacked by a man using a small explosive device, causing only a small fire inside the plane, which is extinguished by a flight attendant; the man is subdued by passengers and crew; there are 3 injuries.
  • 2003 – UTAGE Flight 141, a Boeing 727, runs off the end of the runway upon takeoff at Cotonou, Benin and crashes onto the beach on the Bight of Benin, killing 151 of the 163 occupants.
  • 1999 – Cubana de Aviación Flight 310, a Yakovlev Yak-42D, crashes into the San Luis Hill near Bejuma, Venezuela while on approach to Arturo Michelena International Airport; all 22 on board die.
  • 1986 – Iraqi Airways Flight 163, a Boeing 737, is hijacked by Hezbollah militants while en route to Amman, Jordan. A shootout with security forces causes the plane to crash, killing 63 of the 106 people on board.
  • 1981 – USAF lieutenant Thomas Tiller is rescued from the Atlantic Ocean by a boat after his plane, a F-4 Phantom had an accident seven days before.
  • 1976 – EgyptAir Flight 864, a Boeing 707, crashes into an industrial complex near Bangkok, Thailand due to pilot error; all 52 on board are killed as well as another 19 on the ground.
  • 1972 – The United States begins a 36-hour pause in the bombing of North Vietnam.
  • 1968 – Apollo 8 performs the very first successful Trans Earth Injection (TEI) maneuver, sending the crew and spacecraft on a trajectory back to Earth from Lunar orbit.
  • 1966 – (25-26) The United States conducts a 48-hour stand-down of air operations over Vietnam for the Christmas holiday.
  • 1965 – Hoping to begin peace talks with the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese, President Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration orders a cessation of American air strikes in Vietnam.
  • 1959 – Michael P. Anderson, astronaut, was born (d. 2003). Anderson was a United States Lieutenant Colonel (USAF), a NASA astronaut, and the Space Shuttle payload commander of STS-107 (Columbia) who was killed when the craft disintegrated after reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere.
  • 1954 – BOAC Boeing 377 Stratocruiser G-ALSA crashes on landing at Glasgow Prestwick Airport, killing 28 of the 36 passengers and crew on board.
  • 1946 – Nicknamed “Black Christmas”, three passenger planes, all flying in from Chongqing, China, crash due to fog in separate incidents in Shanghai, China, killing at least 62 of the combined 68 passengers and 9 crew members aboard. Two of the planes belong to China National Aviation Corporation and one to Central Air Transport.
  • 1940 – Two British Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm Grumman Martlets of 804 Naval Air Squadron shoot down a German Junkers Ju 88 off Scapa Flow. It is the first aerial victory in Europe by an American-made aircraft in history and the first by any variant of the Grumman F4 F Wildcat.
  • 1934 – French pilot Raymond Delmotte sets a new world speed record for land planes of 314.33 miles per hour (505.87 km/h), flying a Caudron 460.

References

  1. ^ Winnie Mae
  2. ^ Associated Press, "Burma Plane Crash Survivors Describe 'Rollercoaster' Landing," The Guardian, December 26, 2012, 09:07 EST
  3. ^ Anonymous, "Kazakhstan Military Plane Crash Kills 27 Near Shymkent," BBC News, December 26, 2012.
  4. ^ Associated Press, "Kazakh Jet Crash Kills 27 Aboard ," The Wall Street Journal, December 25, 2012, 8:41 p.m. EST
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