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A Boeing 747

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

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...)

More selected articles

Selected image

Controlled Impact Demonstration

Controlled Impact Demonstration

Credit: NASA

The Controlled Impact Demonstration was a joint project between NASA and the FAA in which a Boeing 720 was deliberately crashed in order to test the ability of the fuel additive FM-9, to inhibit the ignition and flame propagation of Jet-A fuel.

Did you know

...that Ansett Airlines Flight 232 from Adelaide to Alice Springs in 1972 was the first aircraft hijacking to take place in Australia? ...that the Alexander Aircraft Company, which produced Eaglerock biplanes in Colorado, was the largest aircraft manufacturer in the world for a brief period between 1928 and 1929? ... that the Tony Jannus Award for distinguished achievement in commercial aviation is named for the pilot of the first scheduled commercial airline flight?

General images -

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

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  Cessna CitationJet/M2, part of the Citation family of business jets (from General aviation)
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  Leonardo da Vinci's ornithopter design (from History of aviation)
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  D.H. Comet, the world's first jet airliner. As in this picture, it also saw RAF service (from History of aviation)
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  Nieuport IV, operated by most of the world's air forces before WW1 for reconnaissance and bombing, including during the Italian-Turkish war (from History of aviation)
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  La France flying in 1885 (from History of aviation)
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  "Governable parachute" design of 1852 (from History of aviation)
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  Maxim's flying machine (from History of aviation)
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  Planophore model aeroplane by Alphonse Pénaud, 1871 (from History of aviation)
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  First female combat pilot, Sabiha Gökçen, reviews her Breguet 19 (from History of aviation)
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  Alberto Santos-Dumont flying the Demoiselle over Paris (from History of aviation)
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  Otto Lilienthal, 29 May 1895 (from History of aviation)
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  Apollo 11 lifts off on its mission to land a man on the Moon (from History of aviation)
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  Woodcut print of a kite from John Bate's 1635 book The Mysteryes of Nature and Art (from History of aviation)
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  First failure of Langley's manned Aerodrome on the Potomac River, 7 October 1903 (from History of aviation)
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  French reconnaissance balloon L'Intrépide of 1796, the oldest existing flying device, in the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, Vienna (from History of aviation)
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  Early Voisin biplane (from History of aviation)
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  Me 262, world first operational jet fighter (from History of aviation)
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  Map of record breaking flights of the 1920s (from History of aviation)
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  The Wright Flyer: the first sustained flight with a powered, controlled aircraft (from History of aviation)
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  Jean-Marie Le Bris and his flying machine, Albatros II, 1868 (from History of aviation)
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  1843 artist's impression of John Stringfellow's plane Ariel flying over the Nile (from History of aviation)
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  The economy class cabin of an Airbus A350 (from Wide-body aircraft)
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  Félix du Temple's 1874 Monoplane (from History of aviation)
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  Robinson R22, a light piston-engine helicopter (from General aviation)
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  One of Leonardo's sketches (from History of aviation)
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  The Aeroplane of Victor Tatin, 1879. (from History of aviation)
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  "Map of Air Routes and Landing Places in Great Britain, as temporarily arranged by the Air Ministry for civilian flying", published in 1919, showing Hounslow, near London, as the hub (from History of aviation)
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  Experimental helicopter by Enrico Forlanini (1877), exposed at the Museo nazionale della scienza e della tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci of Milan, Italy (from History of aviation)
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  1928 issue of Popular Aviation (now Flying magazine), which became the largest aviation magazine with a circulation of 100,000. (from History of aviation)
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  Flagg biplane from 1933 (from History of aviation)
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  Clément Ader Avion III (1897 photograph) (from History of aviation)
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  German Taube monoplane, illustration from 1917 (from History of aviation)
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  The Biot-Massia glider, restored and on display in the Musee de l'Air (from History of aviation)
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  The business class cabin on an A350 (from Wide-body aircraft)
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  Sailplane, a Rolladen-Schneider LS4 (from General aviation)
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  General aviation aircraft at Cheb Airport in Czech Republic (from General aviation)
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  Qantas De Havilland biplane, c. 1930 (from History of aviation)
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  Daedalus working on Icarus' wings (from History of aviation)
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  The 14-bis, or Oiseau de proie (from History of aviation)
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  The Wright Military Flyer aboard a wagon in 1908 (from History of aviation)
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  Cathay Pacific's first class cabin on board a Boeing 747-400 (from Wide-body aircraft)
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  Concorde, G-BOAB, in storage at London Heathrow Airport following the end of all Concorde flying. This aircraft flew for 22,296 hours between its first flight in 1976 and final flight in 2000 (from History of aviation)
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  Santos-Dumont's "Number 6" rounding the Eiffel Tower in the process of winning the Deutsch de la Meurthe Prize, October 1901 (from History of aviation)

In the news

Wikinews Aviation portal

• May 29: Austrian Airlines cancels Moscow-bound flight after Russia refuses a reroute outside Belarusian airspace
• August 8: Passenger flight crashes upon landing at Calicut airport in India
• June 4: Power firm helicopter strikes cables, crashes near Fairfield, California
• January 29: Former basketball player Kobe Bryant dies in helicopter crash, aged 41
• January 13: Iran admits downing Ukrainian jet, cites 'human error'
• January 10: Fire erupts in parking structure at Sola Airport, Norway
• October 27: US announces restrictions on flying to Cuba
• October 3: World War II era plane crashes in Connecticut, US, killing at least seven
• September 10: Nevada prop plane crash near Las Vegas leaves two dead, three injured
• August 6: French inventor Franky Zapata successfully crosses English Channel on jet-powered hoverboard

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Selected biography

Portrait of Flynn taken in 1929.

The Reverend John Flynn (25 November 1880 – 5 May 1951) was an Australian Presbyterian minister and aviator who founded the Royal Flying Doctor Service, the world's first air ambulance.

Throughout his ministerial training, Flynn had worked in various then-remote areas through Victoria and South Australia. As well as tending to matters spiritual, Flynn quickly established the need for medical care for residents of the vast Australian outback, and established a number of bush hospitals. By 1917, Flynn was already considering the possibility of new technology, such as radio and the aeroplane, to assist in providing a more useful acute medical service, and then received a letter from an Australian pilot serving in World War I, Clifford Peel, who had heard of Flynn's speculations and outlined the capabilities and costs of then-available planes. Flynn turned his considerable fund-raising talents to the task of establishing a flying medical service.

The first flight of the Aerial Medical Service was in 1928 from Cloncurry. In 1934 the Australian Aerial Medical Service was formed, and gradually established a network of bases nationwide. Flynn remained the public face of the organisation (through name changes to its present form) and helped raise the funds that kept the service operating.

Selected Aircraft

The Avro Lancaster was a British four-engine Second World War bomber aircraft made initially by Avro for the British Royal Air Force (RAF). It first saw active service in 1942, and together with the Handley-Page Halifax it was one of the main heavy bombers of the RAF, the RCAF and squadrons from other Commonwealth and European countries serving within RAF Bomber Command. The "Lanc" or "Lankie," as it became affectionately known, became the most famous and most successful of the Second World War night bombers, "delivering 608,612 tons of bombs in 156,000 sorties." Although the Lancaster was primarily a night bomber, it excelled in many other roles including daylight precision bombing, and gained worldwide renown as the "Dam Buster" used in the 1943 Operation Chastise raids on Germany's Ruhr Valley dams.

• Span: 102 ft (31.09 m)
• Length: 69 ft 5 in (21.18 m)
• Height: 19 ft 7 in (5.97 m)
• Engines: 4× Rolls-Royce Merlin XX V12 engines, 1,280 hp (954 kW) each
• Maximum Speed: 240 knots (280 mph, 450 km/h) at 15,000 ft (5,600 m)
• First Flight: 8 January 1941
• Number built: 7,377

Today in Aviation

May 14

• 2013 – The world's first catapult launch of an unmanned aircraft from an aircraft carrier takes place when the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN-77) launches a Northrop Grumman X-47B demonstrator unmanned combat air vehicle in the Atlantic Ocean off Virginia. The X-47B makes two low passes as if preparing to land on the carrier, then flies to a landing at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, Maryland, about an hour later.

• 2012 – Agni Air Dornier 228 crash: After aborting its landing at Jomsom Airport at Jomsom, Nepal, Agni Air Flight CHT, the Dornier 228 AG-CHT, strikes a hillside with its wing while attempting a go-around and crashes, killing 15 of the 21 people on board and injuring all six survivors.

• 2010 – Death of Stelio Frati, Italian mechanical engineer and aeroplane designer. He graduated from the University of Milan as a Mechanical Engineer in 1943, and after teaching aircraft design became a freelance aircraft designer, being responsible for many well known aircraft designs. Best known designs are the Falco F8L and the Aermacchi SF.260.

• 2010 – Launch: Space Shuttle Atlantis STS-132 at 10:21:22 UTC. Mission highlights: ISS assembly flight ULF4: Mini-Research Module 1.

• 2009 – A Royal Air Force BAE Systems Harrier GR9 (ZG478/68) from No. 1 Squadron based at RAF Cottesmore makes a heavy landing at Kandahar International Airport, Afghanistan due to an engine failure forcing the pilot to successfully eject from the aircraft.

• 2006 – AH-6M Little Bird (OH-6 Cayuse) from 1–160th SOAR shot down during combat operations in Yusufiyah, southwest of Baghdad, killing the two crewmen.

• 2005 – A Eurocopter AS350 helicopter piloted by Eurocopter test pilot Didier Delsalle touched down on the top of Mt. Everest, at 8,850 m (29,035 feet). This record has been confirmed by the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale.

• 2005 – The former USS America (CV-66), a decommissioned super carrier of the United States Navy, is deliberately sunk in the Atlantic Ocean after four weeks of live-fire exercises. She is the largest ship ever to be disposed of as a target in a military exercise.

• 1997 – Star Alliance is founded. The world's first and largest airline alliance, headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany (near Frankfurt Airport) the five founders were the world's leading airlines Air Canada, Lufthansa, Scandinavian Airlines, Thai Airways International and United Airlines.

• 1985 – Second of three Northrop F-20 Tigersharks, 82-0063, c/n GG1002, N3986B, during stopover at Goose Bay, Labrador, en route to the Paris Air Show, crashes at 1350 hrs. Atlantic Daylight Time at the end of sixth practice flight of the day, in circumstances much like the loss of the first prototype on 10 October 1984. Hesitating in the inverted position at the top of a series of 9G vertical rolls, airframe dove erratically into the ground, coming down in an upright, wings-level, nose-up attitude on snow-covered ground, killing Northrop test pilot Dave Barnes. Again, G-induced pilot unconsciousness was suspected, investigation finding no sign of airframe failure.

• 1979 – Progress 6 (Soviet unmanned cargo spacecraft) docks with Salyut 6.

• 1977 – In the 1977 Dan-Air Boeing 707 crash, a Boeing 707 crashes near Lusaka, Zambia, due to structural failure, killing all 6 on board.

• 1973 – Skylab, the United States' first space station, is launched.

• 1972 – Two American Bell UH-1 attack helicopters using TOW missiles blunt a major North Vietnamese attack near Kontum, South Vietnam.

• 1968 – Death of Husband Edward Kimmel, four-star admiral in the United States Navy. He served as Commander-in-chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet at the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Because of the attack, he was removed from office and was reduced to his permanent two-star rank of rear admiral.

• 1964 – Birth of James McNeal "Vegas" Kelly, NASA Astronaut.

• 1959 – Convair YB/RB-58A-10-CF Hustler, 58-1012, c/n 19, of the 43rd Bomb Wing, destroyed by fire at the Convair plant, Carswell AFB, Texas. Fuel leak on the ramp during refuelling followed by accidental ignition kills two Convair ground support personnel.

• 1957 – Birth of William George "Borneo" Gregory, former NASA astronaut.

• 1957 – A Royal Canadian Navy McDonnell F2H-3 Banshee, BuNo 126310 of VF-871, strikes a hilltop during ground-attack exercises near Terence Bay, Nova Scotia, killing pilot SubLt. Conrad Bissett.

• 1952 – Birth of Donald Ray McMonagle, USAF test pilot & Manager, Launch Integration at the Kennedy Space Center.

• 1945 – A kamikaze crashes on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CV-6), knocking her out of action for the rest of World War II.

• 1945 – The final Arctic convoy of World War II, Convoy JW 67, departs Scapa Flow for the Kola Inlet in the Soviet Union escorted by the British aircraft carrier HMS Queen. It returns to the United Kingdom later in the month as Convoy RA 67. Queen's presence as an escort is deemed necessary in case any German submarine commanders opt to ignore Germany's surrender and attack the convoy.

• 1941 – During testing, the Grumman XP-50 prototype (39-2517) is lost, falling victim to a turbo-supercharger explosion that destroyed the aircraft. The test pilot Bob Hall bailed out while the XP-50 plunged into Smithtown Bay in Long Island Sound.

• 1944 – The German Luftwaffe employs circling torpedoes in a predawn attack on Allied ships at Naples, Italy, but scores no hits.

• 1941 – German aircraft begin daily bombing of Crete to soften it up for the upcoming German airborne assault on the island.

• 1941 – The RAF receives authorization to attack German aircraft on Vichy French airfields in Syria. British fighters disable two Heinkel He 111s on the ground at Palmyra, Syria.

• 1940 – The Allies lose 110 aircraft – 70 British Fairey Battles and Bristol Blenheims and forty French planes – on one day in a disastrous attempt to bomb bridges over the River Meuse.

• 1940 – Fifty-three German Heinkel He.111 bombers drop nearly 100 tons of bombs on Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The attack kills nearly 1,000 people, destroys 20,000 buildings, and leaves 78,000 people homeless.

• 1940 – The Yermolayev Yer-2, a long-range Soviet medium bomber, has its first flight.

• 1939 – Following first flight of the prototype Short S.29 Stirling four-engine bomber, L7600, out of Rochester, Kent, one of the brakes locks, causing it to slew off the runway and collapse the undercarriage, airframe damaged beyond repair.

• 1938 – First prototype Focke-Wulf Fw 187 V1, D-AANA, crashes at Bremen, Germany, when test pilot Paul Bauer, having completed test series, makes high-speed run across airfield, pulls up too sharply, stalls, spins in next to the control tower.

• 1936 – First flight of the Miles Whitney Straight M.11,two-seater light aircraft with a dual-control, 'side-by-side' cockpit configuration.

• 1923 – Air Union Farman F.60 Goliath crashes near Monsures, Somme, France due to the structural failure of a wing, killing all 6 on board.

• 1917 – Flight Sub-Lt Robert Leckie and crew of Curtiss H-12 flying boat shot down Zeppelin L-22.

• 1915 – The U.S. Navy contracts with the Connecticut Aircraft Company for its first airship.

• 1912 – Birth of Giorgio Graffer, Italian Alpinist and WWII pilot.

• 1909 – Pilot S.F.Cody makes first flight of more than a mile in Britain using British Army Aeroplane No 1, flying from Laffan's Plain to Danger Hill in Hampshire at average height of 30 ft (9.1 m). Later in the afternoon, the Prince of Wales asks Cody to repeat the flight, but in so doing, Cody is forced to turn quickly to avoid some troops in his path, smashing the tail against an embankment. Aircraft rebuilt at Farnborough with design changes to improve performance.

• 1908 – Charles Furnas becomes the first North American passenger in an aeroplane, piloted by Wilbur Wright. Wilbur Wright flew Charles W. Furnas for a distance of 2.5 miles in a Wright Model B.

• 1902 – Birth of Friedrich Schmiedl, Austrian Rocket pioneer.

• 1897 – Birth of Robert Ludvigovich Bartini, Italian aircraft designer and scientist. Active mostly in Soviet Union, he was named, because of his noble descent, Barone Rosso (Red Baron).

• 1894 – Birth of Gilbert Stuart Martin Insall VC MC, British WWI pilot.

• 1884 – Birth of Claude (Claudius) Honoré Desiré Dornier, German airplane builder and founder of Dornier GmbH.

References

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