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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 craft 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. 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

Air Force One
Air Force One
An airport is a facility where aircraft can take off and land. At the very minimum, an airport consists of one runway (or helipad), but other common components are hangars and terminal buildings. Apart from these, an airport may have a variety of facilities and infrastructure, including fixed base operator services, air traffic control, passenger facilities such as restaurants and lounges, and emergency services. (Full article...)

Selected image

Credit: U.S. Air Force photo by TSgt Ben Bloker
Lt. Col. James Hecker (front) and Lt. Col. Evan Dertein line up their F/A-22 Raptor aircraft behind a KC-10 Extender to refuel while en route to Hill Air Force Base, Utah. Colonel Hecker commands the first operational Raptor squadron -- the 27th Fighter Squadron at Langley Air Force Base, Va. The unit went to Hill for operation Combat Hammer, the squadron's first deployment, Oct. 15. The deployment has a twofold goal: complete a deployment and to generate a combat-effective sortie rate away from home.

Did you know

...that the Brimstone missile, an anti-tank guided missile, is carried by three Royal Air Force aeroplane types? ...that Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney was only twenty-eight years old when he helped found Pan American World Airways? ... that the airline Vildanden started its first route with wet leased aircraft from Coast Air?

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

Elbert Leander "Burt" Rutan (born June 17, 1943 in Estacada, Oregon) is an American aerospace engineer noted for his originality in designing light, strong, unusual-looking, energy-efficient aircraft. He is most famous for his design of the record-breaking Voyager, which was the first plane to fly around the world without stopping or refueling, and the suborbital rocket plane SpaceShipOne, which won the Ansari X-Prize in 2004.

Selected Aircraft

AN-225 with the Soviet Space Shuttle, Buran.
AN-225 with the Soviet Space Shuttle, Buran.

The Antonov An-225 Mriya (Антонов Ан-225 Мрія, NATO reporting name: Cossack) was a strategic airlift transport aircraft built by Antonov, and was the world's largest powered aircraft before its destruction in February 2022. Mriya (Мрія) means "dream" (inspiration) in Ukrainian.

With a maximum gross weight of 640,000 kg (1,400,000 lb), the An-225 was the world's heaviest aircraft. Although its wingspan is less than that of the Hughes H-4 "Spruce Goose", the latter never went beyond a single short low-altitude test flight, making the An-225 the largest aircraft in the world to take off more than once. Both the An-124 and An-225 are larger than the C-5 Galaxy, the largest aircraft in the U.S. inventory. The An-225 was also larger than the Airbus A380.

  • Span: 88.40 m (291 ft 2 in)
  • Length: 75.30 m n(246 ft 11 in)
  • Height: 18.1 m (59.3 ft)
  • Engines: 6× ZMKB Progress D-18 turbofans, 229 kN (51,600 lbf) each
  • Cruising Speed: 750 km/h (400 knots, 465 mph)
  • First Flight: December 21, 1988

Today in Aviation

October 24

  • 2004 – Martinsville plane crash occurred on when a Beechcraft Super King Air 200 aircraft owned by Hendrick Motorsports crashed into Bull Mountain, seven miles from Blue Ridge Airport, Martinsville, Virginia. All ten aboard the plane were killed, among them members of the Hendrick family including John Hendrick, president of Hendrick Motorsports; and former NASCAR Busch Series driver and owner Ricky Hendrick.
  • 2003 – Concorde makes its last scheduled commercial flight from New York JFK to London Heathrow, landing in sequence with 2 other Concorde's in a spectacular but very sad finale to a wonderful 27 years of service.
  • 1994 – US Navy Grumman F-14A-95-GR Tomcat, BuNo 160390, 'NH 103', of VF-213 crashed on approach to the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, operating 40 miles (65 km.) off the Southern California coast, killing Lt. Kara Hultgreen, the first female Tomcat-qualified pilot in the Navy. RIO Lt. Matthew P. Klemish ejected and was rescued. Due to low-speed rolling turn, the ejections were on the edge of the seat capabilities, and Hultgreen's did not have time to fully sequence. Her body was recovered by a Navy salvage team, still strapped into her seat less than 100 yards (90 m.) from her F-14 on the seabed.
  • 1980 – Soviet Air Force pilot Leonid Ivanov, selected for cosmonaut training in December 1978, is killed during a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-27 test flight.
  • 1972 – As a peace gesture, the United States begins a seven-day halt on the bombing of North Vietnamese targets north of the 20th Parallel, but continues airstrikes at near-record levels against North Vietnamese supply lines south of the line.
  • 1958 – RAF Avro Vulcan B.1 XA908 of 83 Squadron crashed into the residential neighbourhood of Grosse Pointe Park on the East side of Detroit, Michigan, USA after a complete electrical systems failure. The failure occurred at around 30,000 ft (9,100 m) and the backup system should have provided 20 minutes of emergency power to allow the aircraft to divert to Kellogg Airfield, Battle Creek, MI. Due to a short circuit in the service busbar, backup power only lasted three minutes before expiring and locking the aircraft controls. XA908 then went into a dive of between 60–70° before it crashed, leaving a 40 foot (13 m) crater in the ground, which was later excavated to 70 ft (21 m) deep in an unsuccessful attempt to find the cockpit of the aircraft. All six crew members were killed, including the co-pilot, who had ejected. The co-pilot’s ejector seat was found in Lake St Clair but his body was never found. Conflicting sources claim his body was found the following spring in the lake without a life vest. There were no reports of casualties on the ground.
  • 1957 – The USAF starts the X-20 Dyna-Soar program. “Dynamic Soarer” was a United States Air Force program to develop a spaceplane that could be used for a variety of military missions, including reconnaissance, bombing, space rescue, satellite maintenance, and sabotage of enemy satellites. The program was canceled just after spacecraft construction had begun 1963.
  • 1956 – The last Boeing-produced B-47 is delivered to the Air Force from Wichita. Douglas and Lockheed will continue to produce B-47 s for several more months.
  • 1955 – Eleventh of 13 North American X-10s, GM-52-4, c/n 11, on Navaho X-10 flight number 17, out of Cape Canaveral, Florida, an engine problem results in a mission abort. After autolanding the nose wheel develops a shimmy, the vehicle runs off the skid strip, catches fire, and is destroyed.
  • 1947 – United Airlines Flight 608, a Douglas DC-6, crashes near Bryce Canyon Airport, Utah, when fire caused by a design flaw destroys the aircraft; all 52 on board die in the first hull loss of the DC-6.
  • 1945 – Using a Douglas C-54 Skymaster, American Overseas Airlines begins the first scheduled commercial transatlantic airline service by a landplane, operating between New York City and London. Since the new London-Heathrow airport is not yet available for commercial operations, AOA uses Bournemouth-Hurn Airport.
  • 1944 – The first bombing mission of the 21st Bomber Command against Japan involves 88 Boeing B-29 s in the first heavy bomb strike on Tokyo.
  • 1944 – The Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in history, composed of four distinct major fleet actions, begins. In the morning, a Japanese bomber fatally damages the U. S. light aircraft carrier USS Princeton (CVL-23), which sinks in the afternoon. The first major fleet action, the Battle of the Sibuyan Sea, takes place in the afternoon, with heavy strikes by Task Force 38 carrier aircraft against a Japanese task force in the Sibuyan Sea sinking the battleship Musashi and badly damaging the heavy cruiser Myōkō in exchange for the loss of 18 U. S. aircraft.
  • 1943 – 62 Fifth Air Force B-25 Mitchells raid Rabaul, escorted by 54 P-38 Lightnings.
  • 1940 – The Luftwaffe’s I. Gruppe, Nachtjagdgeschwader 2, scores the first aerial victory by a German night intruder aircraft during World War II with a kill over England.
  • 1940 – The Regia Aeronautica’s (Italian Royal Air Force’s) Corpo Aereo Italiano (Italian Air Corps) launches its first bombing raid over England, using 18 Fiat BR.20 bombers.
  • 1919 – The first trio-mortored airliner was the Curtiss Eagle which carried eight passengers from Garden City, Long Island, New York, to Washington, D. C.
  • 1912 – Harry Hawker wins the British Empire Michelin Cup for endurance. He flies for over 8 hours in a Burgess-Wright airplane. Harry Hawker went on to co-found Hawker Aircraft, the firm that would later be responsible for a long series of successful military aircraft, including the Fury, Sea Fury, Hurricane, Hunter and Harrier. Hawker Aircraft is now part of Raytheon Inc. along with Beachcraft aircraft.

References

Edit today's anniversaries – October Archive – All anniversaries...


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