Timeline of Airline Stuff
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Boeing History: http://www.boeing.com/history
3500BC King Etena of Babylonia was
pictured on a coin, flying on an eagle’s back.
(NPub, 2002, p.2)
1000BC The Chinese invented kites about this time
that could carry scouts on reconnaissance missions.
(NPub, 2002, p.2)
1162 A man in Constantinople
fashioned sail-like wings from fabric into pleats and folds. He
plummeted from the top of a tower and died.
(NPub, 2002, p.2)
1740 Aug 26, Joseph-Michel
Montgolfier, French inventor, born. He and his brother Jacques-Etienne
invented the hot air balloon in 1783.
(RTH, 8/26/99)
1753 Jul 4, Jean-Pierre-Francois
Blanchard (d.1809), 1st balloon flights in England and US, was born.
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/AVblanchard.htm)
1783 Jun 4, The Montgolfier
brothers launched their 1st hot-air balloon (unmanned) in a 10-minute
flight over Annonay, France.
(http://inventors.about.com/od/astartinventions/ss/airship_2.htm)
1783 Aug 27, The 1st hydrogen
balloon flight (unmanned), made by Professor Jacques Charles,
successfully completed its inaugural flight in Paris.
(www.twinring.jp/english/balloon/what_balloon/)
1783 Sep 19, Jacques Etienne
Montgolfier launched a duck, a sheep and a rooster aboard a hot-air
balloon at Versailles, France.
(AP, 9/19/06)
1783 Oct 15, Francois Pilatre de
Rozier (Jean Piletre de Rozier) made the first manned flight in a hot
air balloon. The first flight was let out to 82 feet, but over the next
few days the altitude increased up to 6,500 feet.
(HN, 10/15/98)(MC, 10/15/01)
1783 Nov 21, Jean-Francois Pilatre
de Rozier (1754-1785) and the Marquis d’Arlandes made the first
free-flight ascent in a balloon, to over 500 feet, in Paris.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Romain)(NPub,
2002, p.2)
1784 Apr 15, The first balloon
flight occurred in Ireland. [see Jun 5, 1783 in France]
(HN, 4/15/98)
1784 Jun 4, Elizabeth Thible
became the first woman to fly aboard a Montgolfier hot-air balloon,
over Lyon, France.
(AP, 6/4/07)
1784 Jun 24, In a tethered flight
from Baltimore, Maryland, Edward Warren (13) became the 1st to fly in a
balloon on US soil.
(NPub, 2002, p.3)
1784 Nov 29, American Dr. John
Jeffries paid Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard £100 pounds for a
balloon flight in England during which he made some atmospheric
measurements.
(ON, 10/03, p.6)
1785 Jan 7, The first balloon
flight across the English Channel was made. Frenchman Jean-Pierre
Blanchard and the American Dr. John Jeffries crossed the English
Channel for the first time in a hydrogen balloon.
(HN, 5/15/98)(HN, 1/7/99)
1785 Jun 15, Two French
balloonists died in the world's 1st fatal aviation accident.
(MC, 6/15/02)
1793 Jan 9, The first US manned
balloon flight occurred as Frenchman Jean Pierre Blanchard, using a
hot-air balloon, flew between Philadelphia and Woodbury, N.J. He stayed
airborne for 46 minutes, traveled close to 15 miles and set down at the
"old Clement farm" in Deptford, New Jersey. [see Jun 23, 1784, Mar 9,
1793]
(WSJ, 3/31/98, p.A1)(AP, 1/9/99)(ON, 6/09, p.2)
1794 Jun 26, The French defeated
an Austrian army at the Battle of Fleurus. The French used a tethered
balloon to observe the battlefield and direct artillery fire.
(www.historyofwar.org/articles/battles_fleurus_1794.html)(NPub, 2002,
p.4)
1797 Oct 22, French balloonist
Andre-Jacques Garnerin made the first parachute descent, landing safely
from a height of about 3,000 feet; at some 2,200 feet over Paris.
(AP, 10/22/97)(HN, 10/22/98)
1804 Sir George Cayley, England’s
“father of aeronautics,” built and flew the world’s first successful
model glider.
(NPub, 2002, p.4)
1819 Aug 2, The first parachute
jump from a balloon was made by Charles Guille in New York City.
(HN, 8/2/01)
1838 Jul 8, Count Ferdinand von
Zeppelin (d.1917), German designer and manufacturer of airships, was
born.
(HN, 7/8/98)(WUD, 1994, p.1660)
1852 Sep 24, Henri Giffard, a
French engineer, flew over Paris in the 1st dirigible flight.
(www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/AVgifford.htm)
1861 Apr 20, Thaddeus Lowe landed
in South Carolina only to be surrounded by a group of incredulous
Carolinians who believed he was a spy. Lowe managed to persuade the
crowd that his 500-mile trip from Cincinnati, Ohio, was merely an
innocent aerial journey to test his strange craft. He later tried to
convince the Union to use his skill as a balloonist.
(HNQ, 4/5/01)(ON, 2/05, p.7)
1861 Jun 10, Thaddeus Lowe
demonstrated his balloon, the Enterprise, along with its telegraphy
capabilities for Pres. Lincoln at the White House lawn.
(ON, 2/05, p.8)
1862 Jul 17, James Glaisher (52),
British meteorologist, rose to some 22,000 over Wolverhampton with
balloonist Henry Tracy Coxwell in an attempt to set an altitude record.
They reached 24,000 feet in a 2nd attempt on Aug 18. On Sep 5 Glaisher
passed out as they reached 29,000 feet. At a record 7 miles Coxwell
managed to begin their descent.
(ON, 4/03, p.11)
1868 Matthew Boulton obtained a
British patent on a design for ailerons as control surfaces.
(NPub, 2002, p.5)
1871 Aug 19, Orville Wright
(d.1948), aviation pioneer, was born in Dayton, Oh. His birthday is
celebrated as National Aviation Day.
(HN, 8/19/00)(WUD, 1994, p.1647)(MC, 8/19/02)
1873 Alberto Santos-Dumont
(d.1932), aviation pioneer, was born.
(SSFC, 6/28/03, p.M1)
1878 May 1, James Graham was born.
He was the inventor of the first naval aircraft-carrying ship and the
first man to film a total eclipse of the Sun.
(HN, 5/1/99)
1878 May 21, Glenn Hammond
Curtiss, aviation pioneer and contemporary of the Wright brothers, was
born in Hammondsport, N.Y. He also originally made bicycles and
invented the hydroplane. Curtiss` entrance into flying began in 1904
when Thomas Scott Baldwin, famous lighter-than-air devotee, asked
Curtiss to make him a two-cylinder, air-cooled engine to power his
airship. The first plane Curtiss had anything to do with was Red Wing,
which Casey Baldwin lofted from the ice at Keuka Lake on March 12, 1908.
(HN, 5/21/98)(HNQ, 5/28/01)
1878 Jul 3, John Wise flew the
first dirigible in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
(HN, 7/3/98)
1878 Bishop Wright gave his sons,
Orville and Wilbur, a toy helicopter.
(NPub, 2002, p.5)
1883 Aug 28, John Montgomery
(b.1858) made the first manned, controlled flight in the US in his
"Gull" glider, whose design was inspired by watching birds. The craft
weight 38 pounds and flew to 15 feet for at least 300 feet at Otay Mesa
near San Diego, Ca. In 1911 Montgomery died in a glider crash.
(SFC, 6/5/98, p.A23)(SFCM, 2/6/05, p.3)(GenIV,
Winter 04/05)
1884 Horatio Phillips of England
designed a wing with a curved airfoil shape.
(NPub, 2002, p.5)
1890 Apr 6, Anthony Herman Gerard
Fokker, aircraft pioneer, was born in Holland.
(MC, 4/6/02)
1892 Apr 6, Donald Wills Douglas,
US aircraft pioneer (McConnell Douglas), was born.
(MC, 4/6/02)
1896 May 6, Samuel P. Langley
(1834-1906), American physicist and aviation pioneer, launched the
first reasonably large, steam-powered model aircraft.
(NPub, 2002,
p.5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Pierpont_Langley)
1897 Jun 14, Dr. Karl Wolfert and
his mechanic were killed in Germany when their dirigible, powered by a
Daimler car engine, crashed on its 4th flight.
(ON, 3/03, p.10)
1897 Jul 14, Swede Saloman
Andrée (43) and 2 accomplices, Knute Fraenkle and Nils
Strindberg, in the Ornen balloon were forced down after 64 hours in the
first expedition to fly by balloon across the North Pole. Their attempt
to return ended on White Island. Their fate was only discovered Aug
5-6, 1930, by Norwegian whalers.
(HNQ, 5/22/01)(ON, 11/01, p.11)
1897 Jul 24, Amelia Earhart was
born in Kansas. She was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic
and disappeared in the South Pacific while trying to fly around the
world. Her sister Muriel (d.1998 at 98) wrote a biography of Amelia
titled: "Courage Is the Price."
(SFC, 3/6/98, p.E2)(HN,
7/24/02)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amelia_Earhart)
1897 Sep 18, Alberto Santos-Dumont
crashed his 1st motorized dirigible into trees at the Zoological
Gardens in Paris.
(ON, 3/03, p.10)
1897 Sep 20, Alberto Santos-Dumont
successfully flew his repaired motorized dirigible around the
Zoological Gardens in Paris.
(ON, 3/03, p.10)
1897 Nov 3, David Schwarz of
Austria crashed his 156-foot aluminum powered airship with 2 propellers
on its maiden flight.
(ON, 3/03, p.11)
1899 May 30, Wilbur Wright
(1867-1912), Ohio bicycle mechanic, wrote the Smithsonian Institution
and affirmed his belief that human flight was possible.
(NPub, 2002,
p.5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_Brothers)
1900 Jul 2, Count Ferdinand Adolf
Heinrich August von Zeppelin (1838-1917) made the 1st successful flight
of his lighter-than-air ship LZ-1 in Friedrichshafen, Germany. The 400
foot craft stayed aloft 17 minutes before it crashed.
(AHM, 1/97)(WSJ, 2/120/00, p.A1)(ON, 3/03, p.11)
1900 Oct, The Wright Brothers
began active flying experiments at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Their
first glider was a biplane that soared for 300 feet.
(SSFC, 12/14/03, p.D3)(NPub, 2002, p.5)
1901 Jul 13, Santos-Dumont flew
his powered dirigible around the Eiffel Tower but failed to make it in
an allotted half hour time frame to win a 100,000 franc prize.
(ON, 3/03, p.11)
1901 Aug 8, Santos-Dumont flew his
powered dirigible around the Eiffel Tower a 2nd time but sprang a leak
and caught suspension wires in his propeller blades.
(ON, 3/03, p.11)
1901 Oct 19, Alberto Santos-Dumont
successfully circled Eiffel Tower in his Santos-Dumont No. 6 dirigible
within a half hour and won a 100,000 franc prize. An initial ruling
said that he failed by 40 seconds because the race wasn’t finished
until he touched ground. A 2nd vote granted him the win. This proved
the airship maneuverable.
(ON, 3/03, p.12)
1901 The Wright Brothers
constructed new wings for a large glider using existing aerodynamics
tables. The flight was marginal so they tested the tables by analyzing
model wings in a wind tunnel. The tables proved to be wrong and they
painstakingly computer new ones.
(NPub, 2002, p.6)
1902 In Pittsburg, Texas, Rev.
Burrell Cannon (d.1922), itinerant Baptist minister and inventor, built
his Ezekial Airship and reportedly flew it for a short distance at a 12
foot altitude. The craft was destroyed on a rail car while enroute to
the St. Louis World Fair.
(WSJ, 11/20/02, p.A1)
1902 The Wright Brothers built a
glider based on their new aerodynamics tables. Efficiency was almost
doubled and they made over 1,000 flights at Kill Devil Hills near Kitty
Hawk, NC.
(NPub, 2002, p.6)
1903 Mar 23, The Wright brothers
obtained an airplane patent.
(HN, 3/23/98)
1903 Mar 31, New Zealand aviator
Richard Pearse flew a self-made, bamboo-framed, mono-winged airplane in
Waitohi.
(NW, 3/17/03, p.20)
1903 Dec 8, Samuel P. Langley’s
man-carrying Great Aerodrome collapsed right after takeoff from a
houseboat on the Potomac River.
(www.nasm.si.edu/research/arch/findaids/langley/langley_sec_6.html)
1903 Dec 17, The Wright brothers'
Flyer I flew for 12 seconds in the first airplane flight at Kitty Hawk,
North Carolina. The brothers were the sons of a Dayton, Ohio, bishop
(Church of the United Brethren). Orville Wright made the first powered,
controlled and sustained flight. Orville, lying prone at the plane's
controls, flew a distance of 120 feet in 12 seconds. Wilbur ran beside
Flyer's wing tip until it was airborne to keep the wing from dragging
in the sand. Four sustained flights were made on this day. The 4th
flight lasted fifty-nine seconds. The momentous events of that day
received little press attention, since the reticent Wright brothers
feared their ideas would be stolen by rival aviators. It was not until
1908, after making many refinements to their flying machine, that the
Wrights embarked on a series of public demonstrations that finally
earned them worldwide acclaim. A one-hour PBS documentary covered their
life as part of "The American Experience."
(WSJ, 2/8/96, p.A-12)(AP, 12/17/97)(HNPD,
12/17/98)(SSFC, 12/14/03, p.D3)(SSFC, 12/14/03, p.D3)(SFEC, 9/26/99,
p.B8)
1904 Sep 15, Wilbur Wright made
his 1st controlled half-circle while in flight with Flyer II. On Sep 20
he flew a full circle for the first time.
(http://tinyurl.com/pkwd37)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wright_Flyer_II)
1905 Apr 12, French Dufaux
brothers tested a helicopter.
(MC, 4/12/02)
1905 Apr 29, The Santa Clara, a
heavier than air plane designed by Prof. John J. Montgomery, was flown
by circus performer Daniel John Maloney. The glider was lifted by
balloon to 4,000 feet and then cut loose over Santa Clara, Ca.
(GenIV, Winter 04/05)
1905 The Wright Brother’s Flyer
III became the world’s first practical airplane, but attracted little
attention.
(NPub, 2002, p.7)
1906 Mar 3, Vuia I aircraft, built
by Romanian Traja Vuia, was tested in France.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1906 May 22, Orville and Wilbur
Wright were awarded U.S. Patent 821,393 for "new and useful improvement
in Flying Machines." They had hired a patent attorney to refine their
1903 application. The first successful powered flight of the Wright
Flyer took place on December 17, 1903.
(HNQ, 3/19/01)
1907 Jun 1, Frank A. Whittle,
England inventor (jet engine), was born. (MC, 6/1/02)
1907 Jul 1, World's 1st air force
established as part of the US Army.
(MC, 7/1/02)
1907 Jul 29, The 1st helicopter
ascent in Douai, France.
(MC, 7/29/02)
1907 Aug 1, The US Air Force had
its beginnings as the US Army Signal Corps established an aeronautical
division in charge of "all matters pertaining to military ballooning,
air machines and all kindred subjects."
(AP, 8/1/07)
1907 Nov 13, The 1st helicopter
was piloted by French engineer Paul Cornu (1881-1944). The copter
hovered a foot off the ground for 20 seconds. [see Apr 12, 1905]
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Cornu)(SSFC,
12/14/03, p.D2)
1908 Mar 21, Frenchman Henri
Farman carried a passenger in a bi-plane for the first time.
(HN, 3/21/98)
1908 May 14, 1st passenger flight
in an airplane.
(MC, 5/14/02)
1908 May 22, The Wright brothers
registered their flying machine for a U.S. patent.
(HN, 5/22/98)
1908 Sep 3, Orville Wright began
two weeks of flight trials that impressed onlookers with his complete
control of his new Type A Military Flyer. In addition to setting an
altitude record of 310 feet and an endurance record of more than one
hour, he had carried aloft the first military observer, Lieutenant
Frank Lahm.
(HNPD, 9/16/98)
1908 Sep 9, Orville Wright made
the 1st 1-hr airplane flight at Fort Myer, Va.
(MC, 9/9/01)
1908 Sep 17, Orville Wright’s
passenger on a test flight was Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge. They were
circling the landing field at Fort Myer, Va., when a crack developed in
the blade of the aircraft’s propeller. Wright lost control of the Flyer
and the biplane plunged to the ground. Selfridge became powered
flight’s first fatality, and Wright was seriously injured in the crash.
But despite the tragic mishap, the War Department awarded the contract
for the first military aircraft to Wright.
(HNPD, 9/16/98)
1909 Jan 9, The Silver Dart made
the 1st manned flight in Canada. It was funded by the Aerial Experiment
Association, founded by Alexander and Mabel Bell.
(ON, 1/03, p.5)
1909 Jan 17, Wilbur and Orville
Wright opened the world’s first flying school at Pau, France, and
refused to accept women as students.
(ON, 4/10, p.11)
1909 Jul 25, French aviator Louis
Bleriot (1872-1936) made the first crossing of the English Channel from
Calais to the grounds of Dover Castle in a powered aircraft, winning a
£1,000 prize offered by the London Daily Mail. Piloting his Type
XI monoplane at an average of 39 miles per hour, Blériot made
the trip of 23.2 miles in just under 36 minutes.
(AP, 7/25/97)(HNPD, 7/25/98)(ON, 6/07, p.9)
1909 Jul 27, Orville Wright tested
the U.S. Army's first airplane, flying himself and a passenger for 1
hour, 12 minutes and 40 seconds over Fort Myer, Virginia.
(AP, 7/27/97)(HN, 7/27/02)(MC, 7/27/02)
1909 Aug 2, The Wright Flyer was
formally accepted by the US Army in exchange for $30,000. It was
designated Signal Corps Airplane No. 1, the world’s first military
airplane.
(www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Wright_Bros/Military_Flyer/WR11.htm)
1909 Oct 2, Orville Wright set an
altitude record, flying at 1,600 feet. This exceeded Hubert Latham's
previous record of 508 feet.
(HN, 10/2/98)
1909 Oct 2, Raymonde de Larouche
(1918), Franch actress, flew a Voisin airplane during a taxiing lesson
under Gabriel Voisin at Chalons, establishing the first recorded flight
by a woman.
(ON, 4/10, p.11)
1909 Nov 23, Wright brothers
formed a million-dollar corporation for the commercial manufacture of
airplanes.
(HN, 11/23/98)
1909 Dec 28, The first manned,
controlled, powered flight in the whole continent of
Africa and the entire southern hemisphere was successfully carried out
by the Frenchman
Albert Kimmerling (d.6/12/1912) at East London, South Africa using a
Voisin bi-plane.
(Internet)
1909 The Wright brothers sold a
Military Flyer to the Signal Corps for $30,000.
(WSJ, 5/20/03, p.D5)
1910 Jan 24, Louis Paulhan, French
aviator, made an aerial display at the Tanforan Race Track in San
Bruno, Ca., before a crowd of 75,000. He flew his biplane 1,300 (700)
feet high at 70 mph. Earlier he took William Randolph Hearst for a ride.
(SFEC, 12/26/99, p.W4)(Ind, 8/17/02, 5A)(SSFC,
1/24/10, DB p.42)
1910 Mar 28, The first seaplane
took off from water at Martinques, France.
(HN, 3/28/98)
1910 Apr 28, The first night air
flight was performed by Claude Grahame-White in England.
(HN, 4/28/98)
1910 May 10, The 1st aircraft air
display was held at Hendon, England.
(MC, 5/10/02)
1910 Jun 2, Charles Stewart Rolls,
one of the founders of Rolls-Royce, becomes the first man to fly an
airplane nonstop across the English Channel both ways. Tragically, he
became Britain's first aircraft fatality the following month when his
biplane broke up in midair.
(HN, 6/2/00)
1910 Aug 20, The 1st shot fired
from an airplane was during a test flight over Brooklyn's Sheepshead
Bay.
(WSJ, 5/20/03, p.D5)
1910 Sep 27, 1st test flight of a
twin-engine airplane was made in France.
(MC, 9/27/01)
1910 Oct 23, Blanche S. Scott
became the first woman to make a solo, public airplane flight, reaching
an altitude of 12 feet at a park in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
(AP, 10/23/00)
1910 Nov 14, Lieutenant Eugene
Ely, U.S. Navy, was the first to take off in an airplane from the deck
of a ship. He flew from the Birmingham at Hampton Roads to Norfolk. It
was a Curtiss plane flown by Eugene Ely, a company exhibition pilot,
that made the first successful takeoff from a Navy ship.
(HN, 11/14/98)
1910 Dec 31, John B. Moisant and
Arch Hoxsey, two of America's foremost aviators died in separate plane
crashes. Moisant died in a plane crash in New Orleans.
(HN, 12/31/98)(HN, 7/31/01)
1911 Jan 18, Naval aviation was
born when pilot Eugene B. Ely flew a Curtis Pusher biplane onto the
deck of the USS Pennsylvania in San Francisco Bay.
(SFC, 7/2/96, p.a15)(SFC, 5/7/97, p.A15)(AP,
1/18/98)(SFC, 6/5/98, p.A19)
1911 Jan 26, Glenn Curtiss piloted
the 1st successful hydroplane in San Diego.
(MC, 1/26/02)
1911 Jan, A pair of U.S. Army
aviators dropped the first live bomb. The Mexican Revolution gave the
opportunity to use the airplane in actual combat. Airplanes had already
begun to replace balloons for battlefield observation.
(HNQ, 7/16/00)
1911 Feb 17, The 1st hydroplane
flight to & from a ship was made by Glenn Curtiss in San Diego.
(MC, 2/17/02)
1911 Apr 12, Pierre Prier
completed the first non-stop London-Paris flight in three hours and 56
minutes.
(HN, 4/12/99)
1911 May 16, Zeppelin
"Deutschland" was wrecked at Dusseldorf.
(MC, 5/16/02)
1911 Aug 3, Airplanes were used
for the first time in a military capacity when Italian planes
reconnoitered Turkish lines near Tripoli.
(HN, 8/3/98)
1911 Aug 31, Anthony Fokker's
demonstrated the aircraft "Snip."
(MC, 8/31/01)
1911 Sep 1, M. Fourny set a world
aircraft distance record of 720 km (447 mls).
(SC, 9/1/02)
1911 Sep 9, An airmail route
opened between London and Windsor.
(HN, 9/9/98)
1911 Aug, Calbraith Perry Rodgers
stayed aloft longer than any other contestant at the Chicago
International Aviation Meet. Rodgers had recently purchased a new
Wright airplane, the 1st ever sold to a private citizen.
(ON, 10/06, p.10)
1911 Sep 17, Cigar-smoking
Calbraith Perry Rodgers (1879-1912) set off from Sheepshead Bay, New
York, on the first flight across America. Rodgers, sponsored by the Vin
Fiz grape drink company, flew the fragile Wright B biplane in pursuit
of a $50,000 prize offered to the first person to make a
transcontinental flight in 30 days or less. Rodgers failed to win the
prize because his 4,321-mile flight took 84 days—of which only 3 days,
10 hours and 4 minutes was actual flying time! His average speed was
51.56 miles per hour. By the time he landed at Long Beach, California,
on November 5, Rodgers had made 70 crash landings, suffered numerous
minor injuries and had rebuilt his Vin Fiz so completely that only one
strut and the rudder were its original equipment.
(HNPD, 9/18/98)(ON, 10/06, p.12)
1911 Sep 29, Walter Brookins set
an American record by flying 192 miles from Chicago to Springfield,
Ill., making two stops.
(NPub, 2002, p.8)
1911 Oct 31, Prof. John J.
Montgomery (b.1858) died when his glider crashed on his 56th flight at
the Evergreen College campus south of San Jose.
(GenIV, Winter 04/05)
1911 Nov 1, Italian planes
performed the first aerial bombing on Tanguira oasis in Libya. Lt.
Giulio Cavotti dropped a hand grenade on an oasis outside of Tripoli.
In 2001 Sven Lindqvist authored "A History of Bombing."
(HN, 11/1/98)(SFC, 4/22/01, BR p.3)
1911 Nov 5, Italy attacked Turkish
North-Africa (Libya), and took Tripoli and Cyrenaica. First use
of a plane dropping bombs. [see Nov 1]
(MC, 11/5/01)
1911 Dec 10, Cal Rodgers
(1879-1912) completed the first US transcontinental flight in the
Wright EX Vin Fiz.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calbraith_Perry_Rodgers)(NPub, 2002, p.8)
1911 The first US experimental
airmail flight took place on Long Island, a 3-mile journey between
Garden City Estates and Mineola.
(SFC, 9/12/08, p.B5)
1911 The US Navy acquired its
first airplane, the A-1 Triad.
(HT, 4/97, p.60)
1912 Mar 5, The Italians became
the first to use dirigibles for military purposes, using them for
reconnaissance flights behind Turkish lines west of Tripoli.
(HN, 3/5/98)
1912 Mar 7, French aviator, Heri
Seimet flew non-stop from London to Paris in three hours.
(HN, 3/7/98)
1912 Mar 12, Capt. Albert Berry
performed the 1st parachute jump from an airplane.
(MC, 3/12/02)
1912 Apr 3, Calbraith Perry
Rodgers (b.1879), American pioneer aviator, crashed and was killed
while flying over the ocean near Long Beach, Ca.
(ON, 10/06, p.12)
1912 Apr 10, The first wireless
transmission was received on an airplane.
(HN, 4/10/98)
1912 Apr 16, Harriet Quimby became
the first woman to fly across the English Channel.
(AP, 4/16/97)
1912 May 13, The Royal
Flying Corps was established in England. It was the predecessor of the
Royal Air Force.
(SS, Internet, 5/13/97)(HN, 5/13/99)
1912 May 30, Wilbur Wright
(b.1867), aeronautical inventor, died of a typhoid infection.
(WUD, 1994, p.1647)(ON, SC, p.4)
1912 Jun 7, US army tested the 1st
machine gun mounted on a plane.
(SC, 6/7/02)
1912 Jul 1, Drama critic Harriet
Quimby (28) took a passenger up in her new Blériot monoplane
from Boston to fly over Dorchester Bay at the Harvard-Boston Aviation
Meet. As she descended for landing, the plane went into a dive and,
without seat belts, she and her passenger were thrown out into the
shallow water of the bay, where they struck the muddy bottom and were
crushed to death. Quimby was the first licensed woman pilot in the
United States. Her interest in flight was piqued at an aviation meet in
1910. Quimby promoted aviation for women and once wrote, "In my
opinion, there is no reason why the aeroplane should not open up a
fruitful occupation for women."
(HNPD, 7/31/98)(ON, 1/00, p.11)
1912 Jul 16, A Naval torpedo,
launched from an airplane, was patented by B.A. Fiske.
(MC, 7/16/02)
1912 Aug 25, An aircraft
recovered from a spin for the 1st time.
(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1912 Sep 7, French aviator Roland
Garros set an altitude record of 13,200 feet.
(HN, 9/7/98)
1912 Sep 10, In France J. Vedrines
became the first pilot to break 100 m.p.h. barrier.
(HN, 9/10/98)
1912 The Australian Antarctic
Expedition of 1911-1914 began using an airplane to tow gear onto the
ice in preparation for their sledging journeys. The plane, the first
from France's Vickers factory, had not been seen since the mid-1970s,
when researchers photographed the steel fuselage nearly encompassed in
ice. Australian researchers stumbled on remains of the plane on Jan 1,
2010.
(AP, 1/2/10)
1913 Jan 16, Prof. Thaddeus Lowe
(80), balloonist pioneer, died.
(www.militarymuseum.org/Lowe.html)
1913 May 13, The first 4
engine aircraft was built & flown by Igor Sikorsky of Russia.
(SS, Internet, 5/13/97)(HN, 5/13/98)
1913 Aug 20, 700 feet above Buc,
France, parachutist Adolphe Pegoud becomes the first person to jump
from an airplane and land safely.
(HN, 8/20/00)(MC, 8/20/02)
1913 Franz Schneider patented a
gun synchronizing device in Germany, France and Great Britain. In 1915
it was developed as the "Fokker Scourge" to fire bullets through an
airplanes propellers.
(ON, 10/02, p.8)
1913-1931 The famous Schneider Trophy contests
between over this period were meant to prove the practicality of
floatplanes and seaplanes, but the emphasis on speed produced a
horsepower race that led to military applications, among them the
Rolls-Royce Merlin engine that powered the WWII aircraft: Supermarine
Spitfire. The Supermarine Spitfire was one of the beneficiaries of an
engine that the Rolls-Royce Company built to power Britain’s race
contender, the S.6B seaplane racer designed by Reginald Mitchell. Rolls
continued development of the engine after the races ended and it was
installed in a sleek landplane fighter also designed by Mitchell, and
christened against his personal preference as the Spitfire. The Merlin
would go on to power many other aircraft.
(HN, 9/30/02)
1914 Jan, The St. Petersburg-Tampa
Airboat Line became the world’s first regularly scheduled airline
service.
(NPub, 2002, p.9)
1914 Jun 2, Glenn Curtiss flew his
Langley Aerodrome.
(SC, 6/2/02)
1914 Jun 6, The 1st air flight out
of sight of land was made from Scotland to Norway.
(MC, 6/6/02)
1914 Jul 18, US army air service
1st came into being as part of the Signal Corps.
(MC, 7/18/02)
1914 Aug, Alberto Santos-Dumont
(1873-1932), Brazilian aviation pioneer, burned his aeronautical papers
after French neighbors labeled him a German spy.
(SSFC, 6/28/03, p.M1)
1914 Two-way radio contact was
accomplished between pilot and ground control.
(NPub, 2002, p.9)
1915 Mar 3, The National Advisory
Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), a NASA forerunner, was created. It
was the first US government sponsored organization in support of
aviation research and development.
(SC, 3/3/02)(NPub, 2002, p.9)
1915 Mar 14, Lincoln Beachey, air
devil, plunged into the shallows of SF Bay and was killed as some
50,000 fans watched his performance during the Panama-Pacific Expo. The
battleship USS Oregon recovered the plane and body.
(Ind, 9/5/98, p.5A)
1915 Apr 1, Roland Garros
(d.1918), French aviator, shot down 2 German aviators over Belgium,
with bullets shot through his propellers. Corp. August Spachholz and
Lt. Walter Grosskopf became the 1st to be killed by an enemy pilot
flying alone.
(ON, 10/02, p.8)
1915 May 10, A Zeppelin dropped
hundreds of bombs on Southend-on-Sea.
(MC, 5/10/02)
1915 Orville Wright (1871-1948)
sold his interest in the Wright Company and retired.
(NPub, 2002, p.9)
1916 Sep 2, Two airborne planes
communicated directly by radio for the 1st time.
(SSFC, 12/14/03, p.D2)
1916 The Univ. of Michigan
established the nation’s 1st Dept. of Aeronautical Engineering under
Prof. Felix Pawlowski.
(MT, Summer/04, p.7)
1917 Mar 8, Ferdinand von Zeppelin
(78), Dutch count, air pioneer, died.
(MC, 3/8/02)
1918 Apr 1, In England the Royal
Flying Corps was replaced by the Royal Air Force.
(AP, 4/1/98)(HN, 4/1/98)(OTD)
1918 Apr 8, The US First Aero
Squadron was assigned to the Western Front for the first time on
observation duty.
(MC, 4/8/02)
1918 May 13, The first US airmail
stamps, featuring a picture of an airplane, were introduced. On some of
the initial stamps the airplane was printed upside down; the "inverted
Jenny," as it came to be called, became a collector's item. One sheet
of 100 stamps got by inspectors.
(SSFC, 11/12/06, p.A2)(AP, 5/13/08)
1918 May 15, The U.S. Post Office
and the U.S. Army began regularly scheduled airmail service between
Washington and New York through Philadelphia. Lieutenant George L.
Boyle, an inexperienced young army pilot, was chosen to make the first
flight from Washington. Even with a route map stitched to his breeches,
Boyle lost his way and flew south rather than north. The second leg of
the Washington--Philadelphia--New York flight, however, took off and
arrived in New York on schedule--without the Washington mail. The
distance of the route was 218 miles, and one round trip per day was
made six days a week. Army Air Service pilots flew the route until
August 10, 1918, when the Post Office Department took over the entire
operation with its own planes and pilots.
(AP, 5/15/97)(HNPD, 6/15/99)(HNQ, 4/24/01)
1919 Mar 22, The first
international airline service was inaugurated on a weekly schedule
between Paris and Brussels.
(AP, 3/22/99)
1919 Apr 28, The first jump with
an Army Air Corp (rip-cord type) parachute was made by Les Irvin.
(HN, 4/28/98)(MC, 4/28/02)
1919 May 2, The first U.S. air
passenger service started.
(HN, 5/2/98)
1919 May 8, The first
transatlantic flight took-off by a US Navy seaplane.
(HN, 5/8/98)
1919 May 13, Atlantic City, NJ,
became the site of the 1st municipal airport in the US.
(SSFC, 12/14/03, p.D2)
1919 May 27, U.S. Navy Curtiss
flying boat NC-4, piloted by Lt. Cmdr. Albert C. Read, arrived safely
in Lisbon, Portugal, to become the first aircraft to complete a
transatlantic flight. Three aircraft, designated NC-1, NC-3 and
NC-4--called "Nancy" boats--had taken off from New York's Rockaway
Naval Air Station for Lisbon on May 8, with intermediate stops planned
for Newfoundland and the Azores. Only NC-4 completed the 3,925-mile
transatlantic flight. Heavy rain and fog forced NC-1 down at sea, where
it sank on May 17. NC-3, as depicted in this painting by Ron Weil, came
down in rough seas and taxied 200 miles into the harbor at Horta in the
Azores.
(HNPD, 5/27/99)
1919 Jun 14, Pilot John William
Alcock (1892-1919) and navigator Arthur Witten Brown (1886-1948) took
off from St. John’s, Newfoundland, for Clifden, Ireland, on the first
nonstop transatlantic flight. The flight lasted 16 hours and 28 minutes
and carried the first transatlantic airmail. They won a 10 thousand
pound prize, first offered by the Daily Mail in 1913.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Whitten_Brown)(ON, 4/09, p.1)
1919 Jul 19, Raymonde de Larouche
(1882-1919), Franch actress and aviatrix, died in an plane crash at Le
Crotoy airport in France.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymonde_de_Laroche)
1919 Jul 21, Anthony Fokker
established an airplane factory at Hamburg and Amsterdam.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1919 Jul 21, A dirigible crashed
through a bank skylight killing 13 in Chicago.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1919 Aug 25, The 1st scheduled
passenger service by airplane between Paris and London.
(MC, 8/25/02)
1919 Oct 11, KLM Royal Dutch
Airlines made its debut and served a pre-packaged dinner, believed to
be the 1st in-flight meal, on a flight between London and Paris.
(SSFC, 12/14/03, p.D2)(WSJ, 5/31/08, p.A12)
1919 Dec 18, British pilot John
William Alcock (b.1892), enroute to a Paris air show, was killed while
making a forced landing in fog near Rouen. He and navigator Arthur
Witten Brown (1886-1948) had recently completed the world’s first
nonstop transatlantic flight [see June 14].
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Whitten_Brown)(ON, 4/09, p.1)
1919 Chalk’s Ocean Airways was
founded to fly tourists and fisherman from Florida to the Bahamas.
(SFC, 12/20/05, p.A4)
1920 Jul 27, A radio compass was
used for 1st time for aircraft navigation.
(MC, 7/27/02)
1920 Sep 8, New York-to-San
Francisco air mail service was inaugurated. US postal planes began
flying across the country, but these flights took place only in
daylight because pilots relied on visual landmarks to navigate.
(www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Government_Role/1918-1924/POL3.htm)(AP,
9/8/00)
1920 Australia-based Qantas
Airlines was founded as Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial
Services Ltd. Regular passenger service began in 1922.
(AP, 7/25/08)(http://airlines.ws/qantas.htm)
1921 Feb 22, An air mail plane
left San Francisco at 4:30 a.m., landing at New York (Hazelhurst Field,
L. I., N. Y.) at 4:50 p.m. on February 23.
(www.airmailpioneers.org/history/Sagahistory.htm)
1921 Mar 23, Arthur G. Hamilton
set a new parachute record, safely jumping 24,400 feet.
(HN, 3/23/98)
1921 Jul 21, Gen. Billy Mitchell
flew off with a payload of makeshift aerial bombs and sank the former
German battle ship Ostfriesland off Hampton Roads, Virginia; the 1st
time a battleship was ever sunk by an airplane.
(MC, 7/21/02)
1921 Aug 3, The 1st aerial crop
dusting was in Troy, Ohio, to kill caterpillars.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1921 Nov 21, The 1st mid-air
refueling was done by hand over Long Beach on a Curtiss JN-4.
(SSFC, 12/14/03, p.D2)
1921 Dec 1, The US Navy flew the
first nonrigid dirigible to use helium; the C-7 traveled from Hampton
Roads, Va., to Washington.
(AP, 12/1/06)
1922 Mar 23, 1st airplane landed
at the US Capitol in Washington DC.
(SS, 3/23/02)
1922 Jun 16, Henry Berliner
demonstrated his helicopter to US Bureau of Aeronautics.
(MC, 6/16/02)
1923 Feb 9, Soviet Aeroflot
airlines formed.
(MC, 2/9/02)
1923 May 2, Lieutenants Okaley
Kelly and John Macready took off from New York for the West Coast on
what would become the first successful nonstop transcontinental flight.
(HN, 5/2/02)
1923 May 3, The
1st non-stop flight across the US was completed. Army lieutenants Kelly
and Macready arrived in San Diego from New York in 26 hours and 50
minutes.
(HFA, '96, p.30)(HN, 4/6/98)(NPub, 2002, p.10)
1923 Jun 27, The first in-flight
refueling occurred over San Diego, Ca.
(NPub, 2002, p.10)
1923 Amelia Earhart became the
16th woman to be issue a pilot’s license by the Federation Aeronautique
Internationale.
(ON, 12/07, p.8)
1924 Mar 17, Four Douglas army
aircraft left Los Angeles for an around the world flight.
(HN, 3/17/98)
1924
Apr 1, Imperial Airways was formed in Britain.
(OTD)
1924 Apr 6, Four open-cockpit
biplanes took off from Seattle for a round the world flight. Two of the
planes made it back. They flew 26,000 miles in 363 hours over a 175
days at an average speed of 77 mph. The US Congress had to approve the
financing and the airplanes were built by Douglas Aircraft. [see May 3,
1923]
(Hem., 2/96, p.43)(HN, 4/6/98)
1924 Jul 1, A regular
transcontinental airmail service formed between NYC and SF.
(MC, 7/1/02)
1924 Sep 28, Two US Army planes
landed in Seattle, Wash., having completed the first round-the-world
flight in 175 days. Three U.S. Army aircraft arrived in Seattle,
Washington, after completing a 22 day round-the-world flight.
(AP, 9/28/97)(HN, 9/28/98)
1925 Apr 6, A Deutsche Lufthansa
flight debuted an in-flight movie, a silent-reel short.
(SSFC, 12/14/03, p.D2)
1925 Sep 3, The dirigible
"Shenandoah" crashed near Caldwell Ohio, 13 die. The 682-foot
Shenandoah, a dirigible built by the U.S. Navy in 1923, broke apart in
mid-air, killing 14 persons aboard.
(HNQ, 1/2/00)(MC, 9/3/01)
1926 May 9, Americans Richard Byrd
and Floyd Bennett made the first flight over the North Pole. [see
1888-1957, Byrd] Two teams of aviators competed to be the first to fly
over the North Pole. American Navy Lt. Cmdr. Richard E. Byrd and pilot
Floyd Bennett claimed victory when they circled the North Pole. But
even today experts suspect that faulty navigation caused Byrd to miss
the North Pole. Later archivists determined that Byrd was probably 150
miles short of the pole. His tri-motor Fokker monoplane named Josephine
Ford probably came within 2.25 degrees of the pole.
(HFA, ‘96, p.30)(TMC, 1994, p.1926)(SFC, 5/9/96,
p.A-13)(HN, 5/9/98)(HNPD, 5/13/99)
1926 May 12, Italian Col. Umberto
Nobile of the Italian army piloted his Norge dirigible over the North
Pole with Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen.
(ON, 10/00, p.5)
1926 Jul 2, The U.S. Army Air
Corps was created by Congress. The Distinguish Flying Cross was
authorized.
(AP, 7/2/97)(HN, 7/2/98)(SC, 7/2/02)
1927 Mar 23, Captain Hawthorne
Gray set a new balloon record soaring to 28,510 feet.
(HN, 3/23/98)
1927 Apr 26, US Navy officers
Cmdr. Noel Davis and Lt. Stanton Wooster were killed when their
aircraft crashed near New York while trying to take off with a huge
load of fuel for a final test flight prior to an attempt to cross the
Atlantic.
(ON, 2/08, p.1)
1927 Apr 29, Construction of the
Spirit of St Louis was completed. B.F. Mahoney was the ‘mystery man’
behind the Ryan Aeronautical Company that built Lindbergh’s Spirit of
St. Louis. Engineer Donald Hall designed the $10,580 plane to carry 400
gallons of fuel.
(HN, 4/29/98)(ON, 2/08, p.1)
1927 May 4, The first balloon
flight over 40,000 feet was made.
(HN, 5/4/98)
1927 May 7, Mills Field, later
SFO, opened for business with Captain Frank A. Flynn as superintendent.
(SFEC, 4/25/99, Z1 p.4)(Ind, 5/5/01, 5A)(SFC,
3/26/04, p.F7)
1927 May 8, French pilots Charles
Nungesser and Francois Coli took off from Paris in their airplane named
L’Oiseau Blanc (the White Bird), in an attempt to cross the Atlantic.
Pilots and plane vanished during the flight.
(ON, 2/08, p.2)
1927 May 10, US aviator Charles
Augustus Lindbergh (1902-1974) picked up his plane, “The Spirit of St.
Louis,” in San Diego and flew it to St. Louis. The next day he
continued to New York using railroad maps that he picked up in a
drugstore for 50 cents each. The plane was powered by an air-cooled
Whirlwind engine built by Ryan Aeronautical Company. Charles Fayette
Taylor (1895-1996) worked on the engine design team. Taylor later
authored "The Internal Combustion Engine in Theory and Practice."
(WUD, 1994, p.832)(SFC, 6/23/96, Z1 p.2)(SFC,
6/30/96, p.B6)(ON, 2/08, p.2)
1927 May 20, Charles Lindbergh
(25) took off from Roosevelt Field in Long Island, NY, at 7:40 AM
aboard the Spirit of St. Louis on his historic solo flight to France.
The Minnesota native had decided to compete for a $25,000 prize,
offered in 1919 by Raymond Orteig, NY hotel owner, to the first pilot
to complete the feat. The Spirit of St. Louis, was capable of flying
4,000 miles on 425 gallons of fuel. His greatest problems on the
33-hour, 30-minute flight were staying awake and keeping ice from
forming on the airplane’s wings.
(AP, 5/20/97)(HN, 5/20/98)(HNPD, 5/21/00)(USAW,
5/19/02, p.26)(ON, 2/08, p.1)
1927 May 21, Charles Lindbergh
(Lucky Lindy) landed in Le Bourget Field in Paris after a 33.5-hour
nonstop, first solo flight from Roosevelt Field on New York’s Long
Island. In 1953 Lindbergh authored his memoir “The Spirit of St. Louis.”
(F, 10/7/96, p.68)(AP, 5/21/97)(SFC, 10/20/99,
p.C10)(ON, 2/08, p.1)
1927 Aug, Hermann Koehl attempted
a nonstop flight from Dessau, Germany, to North America in a Junkers
monoplane, the Bremen. He reached Ireland and was forced to turn back.
(ON, 9/02, p.5)
1927 Japan's Imperial Aeronautics
Association launched a competition for a non-stop flight across the
Pacific Ocean. The Ashi Shimbun newspaper offered a $25,000 prize.
(ON, 1/03, p.10)
1928 Feb 7, Australian Bert
Hinkler took off from London in a two-seat Avro 581E Avian biplane on
the first leg of his solo flight from England to Australia. On February
22, after flying 128 hours in less than 16 days, Hinkler's 11,250-mile
adventure ended in Darwin, Australia.
(HNQ, 2/7/01)
1928 Apr 12, Hermann Koehl
attempted a 2nd nonstop flight Europe to North America in a Junkers
monoplane, the Bremen. Koehl along with a navigator and passenger
departed from Ireland and reached Greenly Island, Quebec, the next day.
(ON, 9/02, p.5)
1928 Apr 14, The first air service
from SF to Los Angeles began. Mines Field opened in LA on a 640-acre
portion of the 3,000-acre Bennett Rancho, which had become a popular
landing strip for area aviators.
(SFEC, 4/25/99, Z1 p.4)(Hem, 9/04, p.34)
1928 May 1, Pitcairn Airlines
(later Eastern) began service.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1928 May 24, The dirigible Italia
crashed while attempting to reach Spitzbergen. Nine men survived the
initial crash. In 2000 Wilbur Cross authored "Disaster at the Pole," a
revised edition of the 1960 version of the disaster led by Italian
aviator Umberto Nobile.
(ON, 10/00, p.6)(SSFC, 1/7/01, Par p.14)
1928 May 31, The first flight over
the Pacific took off from Oakland. Charles Kingsford-Smith &
Charles Ulm departed from Oakland, Ca., and arrived in Australia on
June 9.
(HN, 5/31/98)(NPub, 2002, p.11)
1928 Jun 3, Commander Amelia
Earhart departed with pilot Bill Stultz from Boston Harbor to Halifax,
Nova Scotia, and then to Trepassey, Newfoundland. From there on June 17
they embarked on a trans-Atlantic flight from Newfoundland to Wales.
(AP, 6/17/97)(HNQ, 3/8/02)(ON, 12/07, p.8)
1928 Jun 9, Charles
Kingsford-Smith & Charles Ulm were the 1st to fly across the
Pacific when they ended their flight from California to Brisbane,
Australia.
(NPub, 2002, p.11)
1928 Jun 17, Amelia Earhart
embarked on a trans-Atlantic flight from Newfoundland to Wales with
pilots Wilmer Stultz and Louis Gordon, becoming the first woman to make
the trip as a passenger.
(ON, 12/07, p.9)(AP, 6/17/08)
1928 Jun 18, Aviator Amelia
Earhart became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic Ocean as she
completed a flight from Newfoundland to Wales in about 21 hours as a
passenger.
(AP, 6/18/97)(HN, 6/18/98)(HNQ, 3/8/02)
1928 Jun28-1928 Jun 29, Albert
Hegenbeerger and Lester Maitland accomplished the first nonstop flight
across the Pacific.
(NPub, 2002, p.12)
1928 Aug 16, The US Navy selected
the Oakland municipal airport as the site of a US Naval Reserve
aviation base.
(SFC, 8/15/03, p.E9)
1928 Aug, Amelia Earhart became
the 1st woman to make back-to-back solo transcontinental flights as she
flew across back forth across America.
(ON, 12/07, p.9)
1928 Oct 25, An American group,
led by James A. Talbot of Richfield Oil, acquired control of the
American airplane business of Anthony H.G. Fokker.
(SFC, 10/24/03, p.E10)
1928 Oct 26, The Pickwick Stage
System filed documents to form a passenger airplane service connecting
SF, San Diego and Chicago. It planned to use a fleet of tri-motored, 12
passenger Bach monoplanes.
(SFC, 10/24/03, p.E10)
1928 Transcontinental Air
Transport, the forerunner of Trans World Airlines (TWA), was
incorporated. Thomas B. Eastland acquired enough shares to become the
West Coast Director. Clement M. Keys was president and hired Charles
Lindbergh as chairman of the technical committee.
(Ind, 11/16/02, 5A)
1928 The first diesel powered
aircraft, a modified Stinson, took to the air.
(Econ, 9/6/08, TQ p.8)
1929 Jan 2, Evelyn "Bobbi" Trout
(d.2003 at 97) shattered the female pilot endurance record of 8 hours
with a flight of 12 hours and 11 minutes.
(SFC, 2/1/03, p.A18)
1929 Mar 26, The SF board of
Supervisors voted 14-1 to remove Captain Frank A. Flynn from his post
as superintendent of Mills Field, following the story of a Lindbergh
complaint. Charles Lindbergh had come to San Francisco’s Airport, Mills
Field, to promote his airline, Transcontinental Air Transport. His
plane was forced off the field by another plane and became stuck in the
mud.
(SFEC, 6/29/97, AS p.6)(SFC, 3/26/04, p.F7)
1929 Jul 16, Col. Charles
Lindbergh was severely angered when he realized a sound-camera man had
recorded a private conversation using a concealed microphone. The
“voice that has never been filmed” left San Francisco’s Mills Field
airport on the cameraman’s reel.
(SFC, 7/16/04, p.F4)
1929 Jul, Transcontinental Air
Transport began regularly scheduled between NY and LA. Service took 48
hours with trains for night travel. A ticket cost $310. [see Oct 23]
(Ind, 11/16/02, 5A)
1929 Aug 8, The Graf Zeppelin
embarked from Lakehurst, New Jersey, on the first round-the-world
passenger voyage.
(Hem., 2/96, p.43)(MC, 8/8/02)
1929 Aug 18, The first
cross-country women's air derby began. Louise McPhetride Thaden won
first prize in the heavier-plane division, while Phoebe Fairgrave Omlie
finished first in the lighter-plane category.
(HN, 8/18/98)
1929 Aug 25, Graf Zeppelin passed
over SF for LA following a trans-Pacific voyage.
(MC, 8/25/02)
1929 Aug 29, The Graf Zeppelin
returned to Lakehurst, New Jersey, after 21 days 4 hours, a new world
record.
(Hem., 2/96, p.43)(MC, 8/29/01)(ON, 1/03, p.10)
1929 Sep 1, Maddux Air began the
1st direct aerial passenger service from SF to NY. The 48 hour trip
included 2 nights on trains.
(SSFC, 8/22/04, p.F8)
1929 Sep 24, U.S. Army pilot Lt.
James H. Doolittle guided a Consolidated NY2 Biplane over Mitchel Field
in New York in the first all-instrument flight.
(AP, 9/24/97)(HN, 9/24/98)
1929 Sep 30, The 1st manned rocket
plane flight was made by auto maker Fritz von Opel at Frankfurt-am-Main
[see May 29, 1928].
(http://strangevehicles.greyfalcon.us/OPEL%20ROCKET%20VEHICLES.htm)
1929 Oct 23, First
transcontinental air service began from New York to Los Angeles. [see
July]
(HN, 10/23/98)
1929 Oct 28, Universal Pictures
joined with Transcontinental Air Transport to offer moving pictures for
air passengers bound for California.
(SFC, 10/29/04, p.F11)
1929 Nov 28, Commander Richard E.
Byrd embarked on the first South Pole flight.
(NPub, 2002, p.12)
1929 Nov 29, Navy Lt. Cmdr.
Richard E. Byrd radioed that he'd made the first airplane flight over
the South Pole: "My calculations indicate that we have reached vicinity
of South Pole." He was wrong [see 1888-1957, Byrd].
(TMC, 1994, p.1929)(HFA, '96, p.42)(AP,
11/29/97)(NPub, 2002, p.12)
1929 Hangar 1, the first modern
air terminal of LA, was completed at Mines Field in Spanish Colonial
Revival style. In 2005 it was still part of LAX.
(Hem., 5/97, p.70)(Hem, 9/04, p.34)
1929 Amelia Earhart and other
female aviation pioneers founded the Ninety-Nines (a women’s pilot’s
association). Only about 150 of the nation’s 9,800 licensed pilots were
women. While the number of female pilots increased, it was stunted by a
Depression-era society no longer tolerant of the feminist activism of
the 1920s.
(HNQ, 3/16/01)
1929 Ira C. Eaker and three other
pilots set an endurance record for flying. Eaker set flying records in
1929 and 1936, became the commander of VIII Bomber Command and later
the entire Eighth Air Force in World War II.
(HNQ, 3/9/01)
1929 William Green developed the
first automatic pilot used on an airliner.
(NPub, 2002,
p.12)(www.spaceday.org/index.php/History-of-Flight-Timeline.html)
1929 The pilot of a Fokker C.IV
crashed in Vancouver, Canada, during an attempt to fly nonstop from
Seattle to Tokyo. The 1923 plane became a tourist attraction, then
burned and ended up in Maine, where it was restored for the Owls Head
Transportation Museum.
(SFC, 9/13/07, p.E3)
1930 Jan 6, Aviator Douglas
Campbell, the 1st American ace of WW I, visited C.A. “Mother” Tusch at
2211 Union St. in Berkeley, Ca. Tusch’s home was known s the “Hangar”
because it was one of the most complete privately owned aviation
museums in America.
(SFC, 1/7/05, p.F6)
1930 Apr 6, 1st transcontinental
glider tow was completed.
(MC, 4/6/02)
1930 Apr 20, Charles (d.1974) and
Anne Lindbergh (d.2001 at 94) set a transcontinental speed record
flying from Los Angeles to New York in 14 hours and 45 minutes. Anne
was 7 months pregnant. [see Jan 20]
(SFC, 2/8/01, p.C2)
1930 May 15, Ellen Church, the
first airline stewardess, went on duty aboard an Oakland-to-Chicago
flight operated by Boeing Air Transport, a forerunner of United
Airlines.
(HN, 5/15/98)(AP, 5/15/07)
1930 May 20, The first airplane,
piloted by Charles Nicholson, was catapulted from a dirigible.
(HN, 5/20/98)(MC, 5/20/02)
1930 May 24, Amy Johnson became
the first woman to fly from England to Australia.
(HN, 5/24/98)
1930 Aug 13, Captain Frank M.
Hawks, superintendent of the Aviation Division of Texaco, flew a
red-and-white Travel Air monoplane from Los Angeles to New York in 12
hours, 25 minutes and 3 seconds. According to Hawks' own widely
publicized account, the Travel Air performed flawlessly, with an
average airspeed of 215 mph. Hawks made three 15-minute refueling stops
during the 2,510-mile journey. He battled a rainstorm, crosswinds,
hunger and a thick haze that made "the ground barely visible at 8,000
feet," but reached New York City in time for dinner.
(HNPD, 8/20/99)
1930 Aug 18, Eastern Airlines
began passenger service.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1930 Sep 2, The first non-stop
airplane flight from Europe to the US was completed as Captain
Dieudonne Coste and Maurice Bellonte of France arrived in Valley
Stream, New York, aboard a Breguet biplane. The plane was known as "The
Question Mark" because it bore a large question mark, instead of a
name, on each side..
(AP, 9/2/08)
1930 Dec 10, Lady aviator Ruth
Nichols set a new women's record for coast to coast flight, traveling
from Los Angeles to New York in 13 hours 22 minutes.
(NY Times, 11/12/1930, p.1)
1931 Feb 7, Amelia Earhart (33),
aviatrix, married George Palmer Putnam (45), divorced heir to a
publishing empire in Noank, Conn.
(SFEM, 1/25/98, p.31)(HN, 2/7/99)
1931 Mar, United
Aircraft-Transport Corp. acquired National Air Transport. 3 months
later it bought Varney Air Lines and incorporated as United Air Lines
Inc.
(WSJ, 12/6/02, p.B5)
1931 May 18, Japanese pilot Seiji
Yoshihara crashed his plane in the Pacific Ocean while trying to be the
first to cross the ocean nonstop. He was picked up seven hours later by
a passing ship.
(HN, 5/18/99)
1931 May 27, Piccard and Knipfer
made the first flight into stratosphere, by balloon.
(HN, 5/27/98)
1931 Jun 23, Wiley Post and Harold
Gatty flew in a single-engine plane, the Winnie Mae, from New York on a
round-the-world flight and returned to New York on July 1 after 8 days,
15 hrs, and 51 min., a new world record.
(AP, 6/23/97)(ON, 12/03, p.10)(NPub, 2002, p.12)
1931 Jul 28, Clyde Panghorn and
Hugh Herndon took off from Roosevelt Field, NY, in an attempt to set a
round-the world speed record. They got delayed in Siberia and changed
their plan to pursue a record non-stop flight from Japan to the US.
Herndon's mother, an heiress of Standard Oil Company money, financed
most of the trip.
(ON, 1/03, p.10)
1931 Aug, Clyde Panghorn and Hugh
Herndon landed at Japan's Tachikawa Airport and were arraigned for
landing illegally. They paid fines of $1,050 apiece to be released.
(ON, 1/03, p.10)
1931 Oct 2, Aerial circus star
Clyde Pangborn and playboy Hugh Herndon, Jr. set off in Miss Veedol to
complete the first nonstop flight across the Pacific Ocean from
Sabishiro Beach in Misawa City, Japan. A young boy gave Panghorn 5
apples from Misawa City.
(HN, 10/2/99)(ON, 1/03, p.10)
1931 Oct 3, Clyde Pangborn and
Hugh Herndon, Jr. belly landed Miss Veedol, a Bellanca CH-200
monoplane, in Wenatchee, Wa., to complete the first nonstop flight
across the Pacific Ocean from Japan. They won a $25,000 prize from the
Japanese Ashi Shimbun newspaper. Panghorn sent apple cuttings from
Wenatchee's Richard Delicious apples to Japan which were soon
distributed across Japan.
(ON, 1/03, p.10)
1931-1975 Raymond Kelly (d.2003 at 102), flight
engineer, shot 8mm movies of various flights. A 45-minute compilation
was later made: "44 years in Aviation, 1931-1975," and kept at the
national Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC.
(SFC, 10/8/03, p.A27)
1932 Mar 20, The German dirigible,
Graf Zepplin, made the first flight to South America on regular
schedule.
(HN, 3/20/98)
1932 May 20, Amelia Earhart took
off from Newfoundland to become the first woman to fly solo across the
Atlantic. Because of weather and equipment problems, Earhart set down
in Northern Ireland after 13 ½ hours instead of her intended
destination, France.
(HFA, '96, p.30)(HN, 5/20/01)(AP, 5/20/07)(ON,
12/07, p.9)
1932 May 21, Amelia Earhart
made her first transatlantic solo flight from Newfoundland to Ireland.
(HN, 5/21/98)(AP, 5/20/97)
1932 Jul 23, Alberto Santos-Dumont
(b.1873), aviation pioneer, hanged himself in Guaraja, Brazil after
hearing a bomber discharge its load on fellow countrymen. In 2003 Paul
Hoffman authored "Wings of Madness: Alberto Santos-Dumont and the
Invention of Flight."
(SSFC, 6/28/03, p.M1)
1932 Aug 18, Auguste Piccard and
Max Cosijns reached 16,201m in a balloon.
(MC, 8/18/02)
1932 Aug 24, Amelia Earhart became
the first woman to fly nonstop across the United States, traveling from
Los Angeles to Newark, N.J., in just over 19 hours.
(AP, 8/24/97)
1932 Aug 25, Amelia Earhart
completed a transcontinental flight.
(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1932 Night flying was introduced
in the US and transcontinental travel was cut to 24 hours.
(Ind, 11/16/02, 5A)
1933 Feb 8, The 1st flight of
all-metal Boeing 247.
(MC, 2/8/02)
1933 Apr 3, The dirigible Akron
crashed into the Atlantic off of New Jersey and killed 73 0f the 76 men
aboard.
(SFC, 9/20/97, p.A21)
1933 Apr 13, The first flight over
Mount Everest was completed by Lord Clydesdale.
(HN, 4/13/98)
1933 Jul 15, Wiley Post began the
1st solo flight around world.
(MC, 7/15/02)(ON, 12/03, p.12)
1933 Jul 22, American aviator
Wiley Post completed the first solo flight around the world as he
returned to New York's Floyd Bennett Field after traveling for 7 days,
18 and 3/4 hours.
(AP, 7/22/08)
1933 Pan American Airlines took
over China Airways, founded by Clement Keys, and renamed it China
National Aviation Corp. (CNAC).
(SFEM, 2/13/00, p.38)
1933 The first unmanned aerial
vehicle (UAV) was the radio-controlled “Fairey Queen” biplane. It was
catapulted into the air and survived 2 hours of live fire from a
British warship. In 1934 Britain’s Air Ministry ordered 420 such
aircraft, known as the Queen Bee, which gave rise to the word drone to
describe such aircraft.
(Econ, 12/8/07, TQ p.23)
1934 May 18, TWA began commercial
service.
(SC, 5/18/02)
1934 Aug 2, The 1st airplane train
towed 3 mail gliders behind it.
(MC, 8/2/02)
1935 Jan 1, Eastern Airlines hired
Eddie Rickenbacker as GM.
(MC, 1/1/02)
1935 Jan 1, Helen Richey became
the 1st woman employed as an airplane pilot. She resigned 10 months
later after the all-male pilot's union refused to accept her.
(SSFC, 12/14/03, p.D2)
1935 Jan 11, Aviator Amelia
Earhart began a trip from Honolulu to Oakland, Calif., becoming the
first woman to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean.
(AP, 1/11/98)
1935 Feb 12, The 785-foot USS
Macon, the last US Navy dirigible (ZRS-5), crashed on its 55th flight
off the coast of California, killing two people. After takeoff from
Point Sur, California, a gust of wind tore off the ship's upper fin,
deflating its gas cells and causing the ship to fall into the sea. Two
of Macon 's 83 crewmen died in the accident. The U.S. Navy lost the
airships Shenandoah in 1925 and Akron in 1933. Some considered airships
too dangerous for the program to continue at that point, and work on
them in the United States halted temporarily.
(HNQ, 2/7/99)(SFC, 9/27/06, p.B1)
1935 Mar 11, Hermann Goering made
the German Air Force an official organ of the Reich.
(HN, 3/11/98)(MC, 3/11/02)
1935 Aug 15, Humorist Will Rogers
(55), American comedian and "cowboy philosopher," and aviation pioneer
Wiley Post (36) were killed when their airplane crashed near Point
Barrow, Alaska. Rogers once said: "Even if you're on the right track,
you'll get run over if you just sit there."
(AP, 8/15/97)(HN, 8/15/98)(MC, 8/15/02)
1935 Sep 12, Millionaire Howard
Hughes flew his own designed plane at 352.46 mph.
(MC, 9/12/01)
1935 Oct 30, The US Army Air Corps
held a competition to see which company would build the country’s
next-generation of long-range bombers. Boeing’s “flying fortress”
crashed shortly after takeoff and Martin and Douglas won by default.
(Econ, 1/16/10, p.84)
1935 Nov 22, Pan Am inaugurated
the first transpacific airmail service, San Francisco to Manila. The
Pan Am China Clipper under Captain Ed Musick took off from Alameda
Point bound for the Philippines with 111,000 letters. It was the
company's first trans-Pacific flight. The plane was a 25-ton Martin
M-130 flying boat with a wingspan of 130 feet, and was the largest
aircraft in world service.
(HN, 11/22/98)(Ind, 5/1/99, p.5A)(SFEM, 2/13/00,
p.35)(NPub, 2002, p.13)
1935 Dec 1, The fist airway
traffic control center went into operation.
(NPub, 2002, p.13)
1935 Dec, The fist Douglas DC-3
airplane was introduced. By 1938 it carried the bulk of American air
traffic. It was the first practical passenger plane and stemmed from
the DC-1, whose design was led by Arthur E. Raymond (d.1999 at 99).
Raymond helped found the Rand Corp. in 1948.
(SFC, 3/27/99, p.C2)(NPub, 2002, p.13)
1935-1945 There were 12,731 B-17 bomber airplanes
built. Nicknamed the "Flying Fortress," over 4,000 never returned from
combat.
(WSJ, 9/9/98, p.A20)
1936 Jan 14, American explorer
Lincoln Ellsworth and Canadian pilot Herbert Hollick-Kenyon were
rescued by the research ship Discovery II. The pair had made the first
flight across Antarctica, 2,300 miles from the Weddell Sea to the Ross
Sea. They landed when their plane's engine faltered, and waited in the
previously constructed shelter at Little America for a month to be
picked up. After his earlier attempts to cross Antarctica failed,
Ellsworth set out with Hollick-Kenyon in the Northrop Gamma monoplane,
Polar Star, and succeeded. Part of the area that Ellsworth and
Hollick-Kenyon flew over in 1935 has been named the Ellsworth
Highlands.
(HNPD, 1/14/99)(AH, 2/06, p.14)
1936 Mar 4, The 1st test flight of
airship Hindenburg was made in Germany.
(www.airships.net/hindenburg)
1936 Mar 5, Spitfire made it's 1st
flight at the Eastleigh Aerodrome in Southampton, England.
(MC, 3/5/02)
1936 Apr 18, Pan-Am Clipper began
regular passenger flights from SF to Honolulu.
(MC, 4/18/02)
1936 May 6, The Hindenburg airship
departed Germany and on the 9th on May, it arrived at Lakehurst, N.J.,
having completed the first scheduled transatlantic dirigible flight.
(www.airships.net/hindenburg/flight-schedule/maiden-voyage/passenger-account)
1936 Jun 26, The 1st flight of
Fw61 helicopter.
(MC, 6/26/02)
1936 Sep 2, The 1st transatlantic
round-trip air flight took place. [see Sep 6]
(MC, 9/2/01)
1936 Sep 6, Aviator Beryl Markham
flew the first east-to-west solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean. [see
Sep 2]
(HN, 9/6/00)
1936 The multi-airlines magazine
"Airlanes" was begun to popularize passenger flying.
(Hem, 11/02, p.53)
1937 Jan 19, Millionaire Howard
Hughes set a transcontinental air record by flying his monoplane from
Los Angeles to Newark, N.J., in seven hours, 28 minutes and 25 seconds.
(AP, 1/19/06)
1937 Mar 17, Amelia Earhart took
off from Oakland, Ca., in an attempt to become the first pilot to fly
around the globe at the equator.
(SFC, 3/1/97, p.A8)
1937 Apr 25, Clem Sohn (26), air
show performer, died when his chute failed to open.
(SS, 4/25/02)
1937 May 6, At
7:25 p.m. the giant German airship (dirigible or zeppelin) Hindenburg
burst into flames and crashed to the ground as it attempted to dock
with a mooring mast at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey.
Carrying 36 passengers and 61 crew, Hindenburg left Frankfurt on May 4
for its first transatlantic voyage of the 1937 season. A total of 36
died when the fire ignited the 16 hydrogen-filled cells and destroyed
the zeppelin in only 34 seconds. It was 803 feet long and had private
rooms for 50 passengers. It had an 11,000 mile range. A newsreel film
of the Hindenburg Disaster was made. The true cause of the disaster
remains a mystery, although crash investigators considered claims that
Hindenburg was lost due to sabotage or an accidental charge of static
electricity.
(TMC, 1994, p.1937)(Hem., 1/96, p.108)(AP,
5/6/97)(SFC,11/21/97, p.C17)(HNPD, 5/6/00)
1937 Gibbs Field opened in San
Diego, Ca. On May 20, 1950, it was formally re-dedicated as Montgomery
Field in honor of John Montgomery, the man who made the first
controlled flight in a fixed wing craft (1883).
(GenIV, Winter 04/05)
1937 In Iceland an airline was
founded that developed into Icelandair.
(WSJ, 10/14/08, p.B10)
1938 Jun 7, Boeing 314 Clipper
flying boat was 1st flown (Eddie Allen).
(SC, 6/7/02)
1938 Jul 10, Howard Hughes and the
"Yankee Clipper" began the 1st passenger flight around the world flight
from NYC. [see Jul 14]
(MC, 7/10/02)
1938 Jul 14, Howard Hughes landed
at Floyd Bennet Field in NY with a crew of four after flying around the
world in 3 days, 19 hours, and 17 min., a new record.
(Hem., 2/96, p.44)
1938 Jul 18, Douglas "Wrong Way"
Corrigan arrived in Ireland. He had left NY for Calif. [see Jul 17]
(MC, 7/18/02)
1939 Mar 3, Eleanor Roosevelt
christened Pan Am's new Boeing built Yankee Clipper.
(SFEM, 2/13/00, p.38)
1939 May 20, Regular
trans-Atlantic air mail service began as a Pan American Airways plane,
the Yankee Clipper, took off from Port Washington, N.Y., bound for
Marseilles, France.
(AP,
5/20/97)(www.airliner.net/pan-am-clipper-flying-boat/transatlantic-airline-service/)
1939 Jun 28, Pan American Airways
began regular trans-Atlantic passenger air service as the "Dixie
Clipper" left Port Washington, N.Y., for Portugal.
(AP, 6/28/99)(NPub, 2002, p.13)
1939 Jul 3, Ernst Heinkel
demonstrated an 800-kph rocket plane to Hitler.
(MC, 7/3/02)
1939 Aug 27, The world's first
jet-propelled plane, the Heinkel He-178, made its first flight at
Marienehe, north Germany. Hans von Ohain’s aircraft became the first
jet-powered airplane to fly. It remained airborne for 7 minutes. Erich
Warsitz made the 1st jet-propelled flight.
(SFC, 8/10/96, p.A20)(Reuters, 8/28/01)(MC, 8/27/01)
1939 Oct 15, The New York
Municipal Airport was dedicated. It was the largest, most advanced
commercial airport in the world. Its new terminal featured innovative
design that kept arriving and departing passengers separated on two
levels for greater efficiency. It was also terminals adorned with Art
Deco details and fine restaurants and a rooftop viewing promenade as
well as many technological details that made flying safer and less
expensive. On Mar 31, 1940, the new airport was rechristened
LaGuardia Airport after the mayor, who had been a bomber pilot in World
War I and whose interest in aviation lasted throughout his lifetime,
barely a month after it opened.
(www.arcadiapublishing.com/news_article.html?id=1816)(AP, 10/15/97)
1939 Dec 2, New York's Municipal
Airport began operations as an airliner from Chicago landed at one
minute after midnight. The North Beach Airport opened in Queens, NYC,
with 2 levels for passenger circulation. It was renamed LaGuardia on
March 31, 1940.
(Hem., 5/97, p.70)(AP, 12/2/98)
1940 Mar 31, The New York
Municipal Airport, opened in October, 1939, was renamed La Guardia
airport, after the mayor, who had been a bomber pilot in World War I
and whose interest in aviation lasted throughout his lifetime, barely a
month after it opened.
(www.arcadiapublishing.com/news_article.html?id=1816)
1940 May 20, Igor Sikorsky
unveiled his helicopter invention.
(MC, 5/20/02)
1940 May 23, The 1st great
dogfight between Spitfires took place.
(MC, 5/23/02)
1940 Jul 18, The 1st successful
helicopter flight was made at Stratford, Ct.
(MC, 7/18/02)
1940 Aug 25, The first parachute
wedding ceremony was performed by Rev. Homer Tomlinson at the New York
City World’s Fair for Arno Rudolphi and Ann Hayward. The minister,
bride and groom, best man, maid of honor and four musicians were all
suspended from parachutes.
(HN, 8/25/00)
1940 Sep 16, The Luftwaffe bombed
the Bristol Aeroplane Company.
(http://www.fishponds.freeuk.com/nluftbri1.htm)
1941 Jan, The US War Dept. formed
an all-black flying unit that achieved fame as the Tuskegee Airmen. On
June 20 the Tuskegee program officially began with the formation of the
99th Fighter Squadron at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Their 1st
mission was in June 1943. African-Americans were barred from the Air
Corps until this year, and then were shunted to all-black squadrons.
(SFC, 9/22/99, p.A24) (WSJ, 8/17/99, p.A1)(NPub,
2002, p.14)
1941 Mar 15, Philippine Airlines
maid its maiden flight from Manila to Baguio.
(SFC, 9/24/98, p.A19)
1941 Apr 15, 1st helicopter flight
of 1 hour duration took place at Stratford, Ct.
(MC, 4/15/02)
1941 May 11, The 1st Messerschmidt
109F was shot down above England.
(MC, 5/11/02)
1941 May 15, 1st British turbojet
flew.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1942 Mar 3, Canada's Avro
Lancaster military plane made its 1st combat flight.
(SC, 3/3/02)
1942 May 13, A helicopter made its
1st cross-country flight.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1942 Jun 6, The 1st nylon
parachute jump was made in Hartford, Ct., by Adeline Gray.
(MC, 6/6/02)
1942 Jun 18, Eric Nessler of
France stayed aloft in a glider for 38h 21m.
(MC, 6/18/02)
1942 Jul 18, The German
Messerschmitt Me 262 Schwalbe, the first jet-propelled aircraft to fly
in combat, made its first flight. Walter Nowotny was a rising your star
in the Luftwaffe, chosen by Hitler to be the point man to lead the new
jet fighter under the tutelage of General of Fighters Adolf Galland who
was assigned to prove the airplane in battle. The Axis hopes were
dashed when Nowotny was attacked by American pilots during landing and
crashed. Col. Edward R. "Buddy" Haydon was one of those American pilots.
(www.fighter-planes.com/info/me262.htm)(HNQ, 9/2/02)
1942 Aug 1, Ensign Henry C. White,
while flying a J4F Widgeon plane, sank U-166 as it approaches the
Mississippi River, the first U-boat sunk by the U.S. Coast Guard. In
the summer of 1942, German submarines put saboteurs ashore on American
beaches. [see Jul 30, 1942]
(HN, 8/1/98)(SFC, 6/9/01, p.A5)
c1942-1945 The Bell P-39 Airacobra was liked for its
easy-to-taxi tricycle landing gear and the 37mm cannon that fired
through the propeller hub. But the engine mounted behind the pilot led
to balance concerns and the lack of a turbosupercharger in the
overweight airplane rendered it useless against higher-performing enemy
aircraft at higher altitudes. Allied pilots considered it an
accomplishment to even survive in the P-39, much less to win in aerial
battle against the vaunted Japanese Zero, whose pilots considered the
Airacobra "cold meat."
(HNQ, 9/13/02)
1943 Jan 11, President Franklin D.
Roosevelt flew to Morocco for a top-secret meeting with British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill. He had not flown since 1932, when he
traveled from Albany, New York, to Chicago to accept his nomination at
the Democratic national convention. No U.S. president had previously
flown while in office because the Secret Service regarded flying as a
dangerous mode of transport. Air travel was the only realistic option
for the trip to Casablanca because German submarines lurking in the
Atlantic made a surface crossing too risky.
(HNQ, 4/8/02)
1943 Mar 5, The Gloster Meteor
first flew. Great Britain emerged from World War II with a decided head
start in jet technology, the only Allied power to have had a jet
fighter operational in squadron strength before the German surrender on
May 8, 1945. On July 21, 1944, the first two production Meteors arrived
at Culmhead and formed the nucleus of No. 616 Squadron, Royal Air Force
(RAF). Appropriately, the Meteor’s first duty was to defend Britain
from attacks by German V-1 pulse jet-powered guided bombs, of which
they destroyed 13 by the end of the war. Meteor IIIs of No. 616
Squadron were committed to Continental Europe in the last months of the
conflict, but they never got the opportunity to meet the German Me-262A
in battle.
(HNQ, 8/21/01)
1943 Mar 19, Airship Canadian Star
was torpedoed and sank.
(MC, 3/19/02)
1943 Apr 11, Frank Piasecki,
Vertol founder, flew his 1st (single-rotor) craft.
(MC, 4/11/02)
1943 May 15, Halifax bombers sank
U-463.
(MC, 5/15/02)
1943 May 22, The 1st US jet
fighter was tested. Lockheed Martin had picked Clarence Johnson, a
Univ. of Michigan graduate (1932) to develop the nation’s 1st jet
fighter. He had already designed the P-38 Lightning. Johnson and his
staff developed a jet prototype, the Shooting Star, in 143 days.
(MC, 5/22/02)(MT, Summer/04, p.7)
1943 Jul 18, The US Navy airship
K-74 was shot down by anti-aircraft fire from a German U-boat.
(HN, 7/18/98)
1943 Jacqueline "Jackie" Cochran
convinced the U.S. military that qualified women pilots could free men
for combat duty by performing non-combat missions. Supported by Eleanor
Roosevelt and Army aviation chief General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold,
Cochran's goal was achieved with the formation of the Women's Air Force
Service Pilots (WASPs).
(HNPD, 2/25/99)
1944 Mar 23, Nicholas Alkemade
fell 5,500 meter without a parachute and lived. [see Mar 25]
(SS, 3/23/02)
1944 Mar 25, RAF Sgt. Nickolas
Alkemade survived a jump from his Lancaster bomber from 18,000 feet
without a parachute. [see Mar 23]
(MC, 3/25/02)
1944 Jun 13, Only one week after
the Normandy invasion, the first German V-1 buzz bomb, also called the
doodlebug (Fieseler Fi-103), was fired at London. The first guided
missile to be used in force, the V-1 was powered by a pulse-jet engine
and resembled a small aircraft. Only one of the four missiles London
saw that day caused any casualties, but a steady stream of V-1s causing
severe damage and casualties fell on London in coming months. At times,
nearly 100 bombs fell each day. Many German buzz bombs never reached
their targets because of primitive guidance systems or because they
were destroyed in flight by anti-aircraft fire or intercepting Allied
fighters.
(AP, 6/13/97)(HNQ, 6/13/98)(MC, 6/13/02)
1944 Jul 4, Stanley Hiller Jr.
(1925-2006) flew his XH-44 helicopter free from its tether for the 1st
time in the stadium of UC Berkeley. A public demonstration took place
in SF on Aug. 30, 1944.
(SSFC, 4/23/06,
p.B7)(www.helis.com/timeline/hiller.php)
1944 Jul 25, The Messerschmitt 262
became the 1st jet fighter used in combat.
(SC, 7/25/02)
1944 Nov, An Int'l. Civil Aviation
Conference established English as the air traffic control language. The
conference in Chicago attempted to lay down technical and legal rules
for the post-war order in int’l. air transport.
(SFC, 5/16/03, p.A25)(Econ, 10/4/03, p.66)
1942 Jan 6, The Pan American
Airways "Pacific Clipper" arrived in New York under Captain Robert
Ford. He flew west from New Zealand to avoid Japanese attacks and
became the first commercial pilot to make a round-the-world trip. The
Pacific Clipper was known as a "flying boat." This flight was 31,500
miles and took 209 hours to complete.
(AP, 1/6/98)(http://tinyurl.com/yg3ttc7)
1946 Mar 8, The 1st helicopter
licensed for commercial use was in NYC.
(MC, 3/8/02)
1946 Apr 24, The Chief of Naval
Operations, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, ordered the establishment of the
Blue Angels team. In 1985 funding for the program was $4.2
million, about half the cost of replacements for the two A-4 jets. By
2005 21 pilots died during Angels shows. Navy officials said the
super-trained unit and its dazzling displays are valuable in attracting
young and talented recruits into the Navy and Air Force. By 2009 on the
average, one F/A-18 used approximately 8,000 pounds or 1,300 gallons of
JP-5 jet fuel at a cost of roughly $1,378. Fat Albert, which transports
the crew to shows, holds 46,000 pounds of fuel.
(www.navy.com/about/navylife/onduty/blueangels/faq/)(http://tinyurl.com/ydn8pes)
1946 May 28, The US Army Air Force
initiated the Nuclear Energy for the Propulsion of Aircraft program
(NEPA). Fairchild Engine and Airplane Corp. was selected to study the
possibility of developing a long range strategic bomber powered by a
nuclear reactor.
(AH, 2/03,
p.52)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_Nuclear_Propulsion)
1946 Heathrow Airport, a base near
London for fighter planes during WWII, was converted to civilian use.
(Econ, 3/29/08, p.91)
1947 May 1, Radar for commercial
and private planes was 1st demonstrated.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1947 Jun 17, Pan Am Airways was
chartered as the 1st worldwide passenger airline.
(Hem., 2/96, p.44)(MC, 6/17/02)
1947 Jul 8, In New Mexico the
Roswell Daily Record reported the military’s capture of a flying
saucer. It became know as the Roswell Incident. Officials later called
the debris a "harmless, high-altitude weather balloon. In 1994 the Air
Force released a report saying the wreckage was part of a device used
to spy on the Soviets.
(SFC, 6/23/96, p.T4)(USAT, 6/28/96, p.7D)
1947 Aug 10, William Odom set a
solo record by completing a round-the-world flight in 73 hours and 5
minutes, landing at Chicago's Douglas Airport.
(AP, 8/10/97)
1947 Aug 25, Marion Carl, US Navy
test pilot, set a world speed record of 651 mph in a D-558-I at Muroc
Field (later Edwards AFB), Ca. He was shot to death in Oregon by a
house robber in 1998 at age 82.
(SFC, 6/30/98, p.A3)(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1947 Oct 14, Air Force test pilot
Charles E. "Chuck" Yeager (24) flew the experimental Bell X-1 [Bell
XS-1] rocket plane aircraft and broke the sound barrier to Mach 1.07
for the first time over Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., which was then
called Muroc Army Air Field. The area has the largest dry lake bed in
the world, a 44-square mile area known as Rogers Lake. Suspended from
the belly of a Boeing B-29, Glamorous Glennis was dropped at 10:26 a.m.
from a height of 20,000 feet. Yeager (who had broken two ribs in a
riding accident the night before) fired the four rocket motor chambers
in pairs, breaking through the sound barrier as he increased airspeed
to almost 700 mph and climbed to an altitude of 43,000 feet. The XS-1
remained at supersonic speeds for 20.5 seconds, with none of the
buffeting that characterized high-speed subsonic flight. The 14-minute
flight was Yeager’s ninth since being named primary pilot in June 1947.
The Air Force and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (the
forerunner of NASA) did not make the event public until Jun 10, 1948.
(SFC, 8/5/96, p.A3)(SFC, 10/13/97, p.A7)(AP,
10/14/97)(HNPD, 10/14/98)
1947 Nov 2, Howard Hughes piloted
his huge wooden airplane, known as the Spruce Goose, on its only
flight, which lasted 70 sec. over Long Beach Harbor in California. The
plane had an 8-story tail and a 320-foot wingspan. It was designed to
take seven hundred soldiers into battle. The plane had a wing span
longer than a football field, and was powered by 8 engines and was
crafted out of 200 tons of plywood. The war ended before the plane was
deployed, but Hughes proved the Spruce Goose's was air-worthy.
(AP, 11/2/97)(SFC, 7/29/98, p.A20)(HN, 11/2/98)(MC,
11/2/01)
1947 The first airport duty-free
store opened at Shannon Airport.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R49)
1948 Mar 23, John Cunningham set a
world altitude record at 54,492' (18,133 meters).
(SS, 3/23/02)
1948 May 5, 1st air squadron of
jets aboard a carrier
(MC, 5/5/02)
1948 Jun 26, The Berlin Airlift
began in earnest as the United States, Britain and France started
ferrying supplies to the isolated western sector of Berlin, after the
Soviet Union cut off land and water routes. The Soviets had been
harassing the French, British and American authorities in Berlin for
weeks, trying to force them from the city. Finally, when all surface
routes to the city were blockaded, it became clear that an airlift
through the Allied sectors was the only way to re-supply the 2 million
West Berliners. In spite of the enormous human and financial cost,
“Operation Vittles” supplied food, fuel and hope to beleaguered
citizens until the Soviet barricades were finally lifted on May 12,
1949. In 2010 Richard Reeves authored “Daring Young Men: The Heroism
and Triumph of the Berlin Airlift, June 1948-May 1949.”
(AP, 6/26/98)(HN,
6/26/99)(http://tinyurl.com/gqhi)(Econ, 1/2/10, p.63)
1948 Jul 1, New York International
Airport at Idlewild, later renamed John F. Kennedy International
Airport, was officially opened.
(AP, 7/1/98)
1948 The John Murtha Airport
opened in Jonestown, Pennsylvania. From 1989-2009 Congressman John
Murtha steered some $150,000,000 to the airport. In 2009 there were a
total of 18 commercial flights per week, all of which went to Dulles
Airport in Washington, DC.
(http://tinyurl.com/nsdv8k)(Econ, 1/23/10, p.26)
1949 Feb 26, A USAF plane began a
1st nonstop around-the-world flight.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1949 Mar 2, The Lucky Lady II
(USAF B-50 Superfortress), landed at Fort Worth , Texas, after
completing the first non-stop, round-the-world flight: 23,452-mis in 94
hours.
(AP, 3/2/98)(SC, 3/2/02)
1949 May 13, The 1st
British-produced jet bomber, Canberra, made its 1st test flight.
(MC, 5/13/02)
1949 Jul 27, The British 36-seat
jet-propelled De Havilland Comet 1 flew for the first time.
(www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Commercial_Aviation/Opening_of_Jet_era/Tran6.htm)
1949 Sep 30, The Berlin airlift
ended its operation after 277,264 flights. Through accidents 31
Americans lost their lives in support of the airlift. The Berlin
Airlift, which began on June 26, 1948, and lasted 321 days, consisted
of 272,264 flights by British and American airmen. They transported
some 2.3 million tons of food to supply the 2.1 million residents of
the blockaded portion of the city. The operation ended after 278,288
flights and delivery of 2,326,406 tons of supplies. In 2010 Richard
Reeves authored “Daring Young Men: The Heroism and Triumph of the
Berlin Airlift, June 1948-May 1949.”
(EWH, 1968, p.1180)(AP, 9/30/97)(SFC, 5/12/98,
p.A14)(HNQ, 7/9/98)(SSFC, 3/28/10, p.f3)
1950 Apr 8, A US Navy privateer
airplane flew from Wiesbaden, West Germany, to spy over the Soviet
Union with 10 people on board. Soviet reconnaissance spotted the plane
over Latvia and shot it down.
(SFEC,12/21/97, p.A26)
1950 Apr 11, A US B-29 bomber was
shot down above Latvia.
(MC, 4/11/02)
1950 Apr 18, The first
transatlantic jet passenger trip was made.
(HN, 4/18/98)
1951 The US Atomic Energy
Commission and the Air Force instituted the Aircraft Nuclear propulsion
development Program (ANP). It ended in 1961 under Pres. John F. Kennedy.
(AH, 2/03, p.52, 56)
1952 Apr 15, The 1st B-52
prototype test flight was made.
(MC, 4/15/02)
1952 Apr 21, BOAC began 1st
passenger service with jets from London to Rome.
(MC, 4/21/02)
1952 May 1, TWA introduced tourist
class.
(MC, 5/1/02)
1952 May 2,The British Overseas
Aircraft Corporation (BOAC), the national British carrier, introduced
the world’s 1st commercial jet airliner service. Initial flights took
passengers from London to Johannesburg in South Africa, with stops.
(www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Commercial_Aviation/Opening_of_Jet_era/Tran6.htm)
1952 May 3, The first airplane
landed at geographic North Pole. It was a ski-modified U.S. Air Force
C-47, piloted by Lieutenant Colonel William P. Benedict (d.1974) of
California and Lieutenant Colonel Joseph O. Fletcher of Oklahoma. In
2002 Charles B. Compton authored "Born to Fly: Some Life Sketches of
Lieutenant Colonel William P. Benedict."
(Polar Times, Fall, 97)(CBC)
1952 KLM Royal Dutch Airlines
began offering first class passengers ceramic houses filled with
liquor. Industry rules capped handouts at 75 cents, but there was no
limit on booze. In 2008 the 89th house in the series made it debut on
Oct 7, the airline’s 89th birthday.
(WSJ, 5/31/08, p.A1)
1953 May 18, Jacqueline Cochran
became the first woman to break the sound barrier as she piloted a
North American F-86 Canadair over Rogers Dry Lake, Calif.
(AP, 5/18/97)
1953 Jul 9, The 1st helicopter
passenger service began in NYC.
(MC, 7/9/02)
1953 Aug 7, Eastern Airlines
entered the jet age with the Electra prop-jet.
(MC, 8/7/02)
1953 Aug 21, Marion Carl in
Douglas Skyrocket reached a record 25,370 m.
(SC, 8/21/02)
1953 Oct 19, America's
first ever non-stop transcontinental service began with flights by
American Airlines using DC-7 aircraft.
(www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Commercial_Aviation/Opening_of_Jet_era/Tran6.htm)
1953 Nov 20, Scott Crossfield
(1921-2006), test pilot for the National Advisory Committee for
Aeronautics (NACA), flew a D-558-II Skyrocket to a record speed of over
1,320 mph.
(SFC, 4/21/06, p.B9)
1953 Dec 12, Chuck Yeager, test
pilot for the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA),
reached Mach 2.43 in Bell X-1A rocket plane.
(SFC, 4/21/06, p.B9)
1954 Feb 6, A US Air Force
4-engine RC-121 Super Constellation, one of the new flying radar
stations, crashed in the shallows of San Pablo Bay. All 13 crew members
survived.
(SFC, 2/6/04, p.E12)
1954 Apr 1, U.S. Air Force Academy
was founded in Colorado. President Dwight Eisenhower signed a bill
authorizing the establishment of an Air Force Academy, similar to West
Point and Annapolis. On July 11, 1955, the first class was sworn in at
Lowry Air Force Base. The academy moved to a permanent site near
Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 1958.
(HN, 4/1/98)(HNQ, 2/22/99)(MC, 4/1/02)
1954 Jul 5, The B-52A bomber made
its maiden flight.
(MC, 7/5/02)
1954 Jul 15, The Boeing “Dash 80,”
a prototype of the 707, made its first test flight.
(NPub, 2002, p.17)
1954 Aug 3, The 1st VTOL (Vertical
Take-off & Land) aircraft was flown.
(SC, 8/3/02)
1954 Aug 29, The SF International
Airport’s (SFO) Terminal 2 opened with a ceremony led by Mayor
Robinson. Mills Field became SF Airport.
(SFEC, 5/16/99, Z1 p.4)(SSFC, 8/22/04, p.F8)
1954 Col. John Paul Stapp, an Air
Force medical researcher, accelerated to 632 mph on a rocket powered
sled in 5 sec. The sled then decelerated to a dead stop in 1.4 sec.
with 40 times the pull of gravity.
(SFC, 11/18/99, p.C7)
1954 In Lebanon Beirut Int’l.
Airport opened. In 1998 a new $460 million airport was under
construction.
(WSJ, 4/6/98, p.A1)y
1955 Feb 26, G.F. Smith became the
1st aviator to bail out at supersonic speed.
(SC, 2/26/02)
1955 May 21, The first
transcontinental round-trip solo flight was completed.
(HN, 5/21/98)
1955 Jun 11, The 1st jet magnesium
airplane was flown.
(SC, 6/11/02)
1955 Aug 4, The U-2 reconnaissance
prototype made its first flight.
(NPub, 2002, p.17)
1955 Sep 17, A US Convair B-36
bomber took off from Carswell AFB, Texas, becoming the first aircraft
in the world to fly with a nuclear reactor. Over the next 2 years the
Convair Crusader made 47 flights.
(AH, 2/03, p.51)
1955 In England Heathrow Airport’s
Terminal 2 was completed.
(Econ, 3/29/08, p.91)
1956 Jul 23, The Bell X-2 rocket
plane set a world aircraft speed record of 3,050 kph.
(MC, 7/23/02)
1957 Jan 16, Three B-52's
(accompanied at first by two spare aircraft) took off from Castle Air
Force Base in California on the first nonstop, round-the-world flight
by jet planes, which lasted 45 hours and 19 minutes.
(AP, 1/16/07)
1957 Jan 18, A trio of B-52's
completed the first nonstop, round-the-world flight by jet planes,
landing at March Air Force Base in California after more than 45 hours
aloft.
(AP, 1/18/07)
1957 Apr 11, The Ryan X-13
Vertijet became the 1st jet to take-off and land vertically.
(MC, 4/11/02)
1957 May, Two US fighter planes
were scrambled and ordered to shoot down an unidentified flying object
(UFO) over the English countryside. This was only made public on Oct
20, 2008, when Britain made public secret files on UFOs.
(Reuters, 10/20/08)
1957 Jul 16, Marine Maj. John
Glenn set a transcontinental speed record when he flew a jet from
California to New York in 3 hours, 23 minutes and 8 seconds.
(AP, 7/16/97)
1958 Mar 25, Canada’s era of
supersonic flight began, when pilot Jan Zurakowski took off from Malton
Airport near Toronto in an Avro CF-105 Arrow for a 35-minute maiden
flight. Less than a month later, Zurakowski flew the Arrow at Mach 1.5
at an altitude of 50,000 feet. In spite of the aircraft’s early
promise, the Canadian government scrapped the project before the Arrow
could be put into production.
(HNPD, 8/21/00)
1958 Mar 29, Aerial circus star
Clyde Pangborn died. He and playboy Hugh Herndon, Jr. complete the
first nonstop flight across the Pacific Ocean in 1931.
(HN, 10/2/99)(ON, 1/03, p.10)
1958 May 7, Howard Johnson set an
aircraft altitude record in F-104.
(HN, 5/7/98)
1958 May 16, A man endured a
record 82.6 G for .04 seconds on a water-braked rocket sled at Holloman
Air Force Base. He was hospitalized for 3 days for recovery.
(SFEC, 7/2/00, Z1 p.2)
1958 Jul, Soviet fighter planes
shot down an RB-50G US reconnaissance plane over the east coast of the
USSR. In 2002 William E. Burrows authored “by Any Means Necessary:
America’s Secret Air War in the Cold War.”
(AH, 6/02, p.70)
1958 Aug 29, Air Force Academy
opened in Colorado Springs, Colo.
(MC, 8/29/01)
1958 Oct 4, The first
trans-Atlantic passenger jetliner service was begun by British Overseas
Airways Corporation (BOAC) with flights between London and New York.
(AP, 10/4/97)
1958 Oct 26, Pan American Airways
pilot Samuel H. Miller (d.2001 at 84) flew the first Boeing 707
passenger service jetliner from New York’s Idlewild Airport (later JFK)
to Paris; the trip took eight hours and 41 minutes. 111 passengers flew
aboard the Clipper America and a ticket cost $489.60. The plane was
christened a week earlier by Mamie Eisenhower. The first New York
London transatlantic jet passenger service was inaugurated by BOAC.
[see Oct 4]
(AP, 10/26/97)(WSJ, 10/23/98, p.W6)(HN,
10/26/98)(SFC, 9/12/01, p.A21)
1958 Dec 10, The first domestic
passenger jet flight took place in the United States as a National
Airlines Boeing 707 flew 111 passengers from New York City to Miami.
(AP, 12/10/97)
1958 Passenger service by air over
the Atlantic exceeded passenger steamship crossings for the 1st time.
(SSFC, 12/14/03, p.D2)
1959 Jun 8, The NASA rocket
powered X-15 made its first glide flight.
(http://history.nasa.gov/x15/chrono.html)
1959 Sep 15, Scott Crossfield
(1921-2006) flew the rocket-powered X-15 faster and higher than any
aircraft in history.
(NPub, 2002, p.19)
1959 Sep 17, The North American
Aviation X-15 rocket plane, piloted by Scott Crossfield, made its first
powered flight.
(SFC, 4/21/06,
p.B9)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Scott_Crossfield)
1959 Industrialist Henry Kremer
offered the Kremer Prizes of £5,000 for the first man-powered
aeroplane to fly a figure-of-eight course round two markers half-a-mile
apart.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-powered_flight)
1960 May 17, The YF4H-1 Phantom
fighter and Douglas DC-8 were unveiled.
(NPub, 2002, p.19)
1961 Apr 30, Eastern Airlines
began the 1st shuttle flights began between Wash DC, Boston and NYC.
(MC, 4/30/02)
1961 May 26, A USAF bomber flew
the Atlantic in a record of just over three hours.
(HN, 5/26/98)
1961 Jul 24, A US commercial plane
was hijacked to Cuba and began a trend.
(MC, 7/24/02)
1961 Nov 1, Pres. J.F. Kennedy
signed executive order 10971 creating a board of three members to
investigate a dispute between TWA and certain of its employees.
(www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/jfkeo/eo/10971.htm)
1961 United Airlines merged with
Capital Airlines and became the world’s largest commercial airline.
(WSJ, 12/6/02, p.A1)
1962 American Airlines rolled out
its proprietary computerized reservation system, Sabre.
(Econ, 4/3/04, p.70)
1963 Jun 27, USAF Major Robert A.
Rushworth reached an altitude of 53.9 miles in the X-15.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_X-15)
1963 Aug 22, The X-15 aircraft set
an altitude record of 67 miles.
(NPub, 2002, p.20)
1964 Apr, In Marin County, Ca.,
Danny Nowell (11) was caught by the hand on a hot-air balloon rope and
went airborne for about 10 minutes and 2 miles before being
rescued.
(SFC, 10/20/09, p.A1)
1964 The US used an unmanned
aerial vehicle (UAV) called the Firebee, a small jet-powered drone, for
taking photographs over China. It was launched from another plane and
released a parachute upon return for pickup by a helicopter. It was
later used in the Vietnam war.
(Econ, 12/8/07, TQ p.23)
1966 Apr 13, Pan Am placed a
$525,000,000 order for 25 Boeing 747s. The 747 jumbo jet revolutionized
mass air transportation.
(MC, 4/13/02)(SSFC, 12/14/03, p.D2)
1966 Jul 8, A US airline strike
began and lasted until Aug 19th.
(MC, 7/8/02)
1967 Sep, The British, French and
German governments signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to start
development of the 300 seat Airbus A300 in order to compete with
American companies. Airbus Industrie was formally set up in 1970.
(www.absoluteastronomy.com/reference/airbus)
1967 Apr 9, The 1st Boeing 737
rolled out.
(MC, 4/9/02)
1967 Trudy Baker, Rachel Jones and
Donald Bain authored “Coffee, Tea or Me: The Uninhibited Memoirs of Two
Airline Stewardesses.” The pseudonymous author turned out to be a male
airline publicist.
(http://tinyurl.com/33hh6e)(Econ, 5/5/07, p.105)
1968 Jun 30, The Lockheed C-5A
Galaxy, a large US Air Force transport plane, made its first flight.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-5_Galaxy)
1968 Jul 15, Commercial air travel
began between US & USSR.
(www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1968/1968%20-%201275.html)
1968 Aug 21, William Dana reached
81.53 km. in the last high-altitude X-15 flight.
(http://pages.prodigy.net/pxkb94ars/Astro_X-15_Flights_9.htm)
1968 Sep 30, The 1st Boeing 747
was rolled out of the Everett, Wa., assembly building.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_747)
1968 Nov 23, Five Cubans hijacked
a US B-727 jet, from Chicago to Cuba.
(http://cuban-exile.com/doc_176-200/doc0180.html)
1968 Nov 24, Three Latins hijacked
a US B-707 jet, from New York’s Kennedy Int’l. to Cuba. Pena Soltren, a
US citizen, and two accomplices used weapons hidden in a diaper bag to
hijack the Pan Am flight. In 2009 Luis Armando Pena Soltren (66)
voluntarily returned to the same airport to surrender and face
prosecution.
(http://cuban-exile.com/doc_176-200/doc0180.html)(AP, 10/12/09)
1968 Dec 5, Eduardo Castera, a
Latin successfully hijacked a B-727 from Tampa to Cuba.
(http://cuban-exile.com/doc_176-200/doc0180.html)
1968 Dec 11, Two blacks
successfully hijacked a DC-8 from St. Louis to Cuba.
(http://cuban-exile.com/doc_176-200/doc0180.html)
1968 Dec 28, Israel attacked the
Beirut Int’l. Airport, destroying 13 civilian planes. This was in
response to an attack on an Israeli airliner in Athens by the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Israeli_raid_on_Lebanon)
1968 Dec 31, The Soviet Union's
TU-144, similar in appearance to the Concorde, made its 1st flight. The
first Tu-144S production aircraft crashed at the 1973 Paris Air Show.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-144)
1969 Feb 9, The Boeing 747, the
world's largest airplane, made its 1st commercial flight.
(www.boeing.com/commercial/747family/pf/pf_milestones.html)
1969 Mar 2, The Concorde
jetliner's 1st test flight took place in Bristol, England.
(www.xent.com/pipermail/fork/Week-of-Mon-20031013/026200.html)
1969 Apr 9, The maiden flight of
Concorde 002 was from Filton to Bristol.
(www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects/aeronautics/1977-45.aspx)
1969 Jun 4, A 22-year-old man
sneaked into wheel pod of a jet parked in Havana & survived a 9-hr
flight to Spain despite thin oxygen levels at 29,000 ft.
(MC, 6/4/02)
1969 Oct 5, Lieutenant Eduardo
Guerra Jimenez, a Cuban defector, entered US air space undetected and
landed his Soviet-made MiG-17 at Homestead Air Force Base near Miami,
Florida, where the presidential aircraft Air Force One was waiting to
return President Richard M. Nixon to DC.
(www.missilesofkeywest.bravepages.com/penetrated.htm)
1969 Dec 12, PanAm signed for the
first delivery of the new Boeing 747-100. Commercial service began Jan
21, 1970.
(Econ, 11/4/06, p.21)(http://tinyurl.com/ye3vwv)
1969 Dec 30, The US Federal
Aviation Administration certified the Boeing 747-100 for commercial
service.
(www.boeing.com/commercial/747family/pf/pf_milestones.html)
1969 Pan Am selected Najeeb Halaby
(d.2003 at 87), former FAA head, as successor to chairman Juan Trippe.
Halaby served 3 years as CEO. His daughter later became Queen Noor of
Jordan.
(SFC, 7/4/03, p.A25)
1969 Embraer SA, an aircraft
maker, was founded by Brazil’s military dictatorship in an effort to
develop an aviation industry.
(WSJ, 9/13/04, p.A8)
1970 Jan 21, The Boeing 747-100
made its 1st commercial transatlantic flight from NY to London. The
plane was 231 feet long with a wing span of 195 feet. It could seat 400
people in a cabin 182 feet long.
(WSJ, 7/19/96,
p.B5)(www.boeing.com/commercial/747family/pf/pf_milestones.html)
1970 Mar 25, The Concorde, an
Anglo-French airplane, made its first supersonic flight.
(HN, 3/24/98)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde)
1970 Apr 30, Yoshimi Tanaka and a
group of students of the Red Army Faction, including Shiro Akagi,
seized a Japan Airlines jet and flew to Pyongyang, N. Korea, in Japan's
first ever case of air piracy. In 1996 Tanaka was sentenced to 12 years
in prison.
(http://tinyurl.com/3c4bk7)(AP,
6/5/07)(www.tkb.org/KeyLeader.jsp?memID=102)
1970 Aug 1, W.
Lain Guthrie (d.1997 at 84), a commercial airline pilot, refused to
dump kerosene into the atmosphere as had been common practice. He kept
his DC-8 on the ground and ordered the ground crew to drain the waste
fuel from the previous flight. He was fired but other pilots supported
him and he was reinstated and the industry stopped its dumping.
(SFC, 3/28/97, p.D2)
1970 Sep 13, The supersonic
airliner Concorde landed for the 1st time at Heathrow airport.
(www.aviation-news.co.uk/concordeChronology.html)
1970 Oct 24, The X24A lifting body
exceeded Mach 1. The X-24A was the Martin Corporation's subsonic test
version of the US Air Force's preferred manned lifting body
configuration. The lifting bodies were used to demonstrate the ability
of pilots to maneuver and safely land wingless vehicles designed to fly
back to Earth from space and be landed like an airplane at a
predetermined site.
(NPub, 2002,
p.22)(www.dfrc.nasa.gov/Gallery/Movie/X-24A/index.html)
1970 Airbus Industrie was formally
set up following an agreement between Aerospatiale (France) and
Deutsche Aerospace (Germany). In 1971 it was joined by CASA (Spain).
The name "Airbus" was taken from a nonproprietary term used by the
airline industry in the 1960s to refer to a commercial aircraft of a
certain size and range, as term was acceptable to the French
linguistically.
(www.absoluteastronomy.com/reference/airbus)
1971 Feb 4, Rolls-Royce collapsed
due to rising development costs on the RB.211, the sole powerplant
selected for the Lockheed TriStar.
(http://widebodyaircraft.nl/chro1971.htm)
1971 Jun , Southwest Airlines,
co-founded by Herbert Kelleher, made its 1st flight.
(WSJ, 1/13/03, p.A1)(WSJ, 7/11/03, p.A6)
1971 May 20, The US Congress
cancelled the supersonic SST airplane program.
(WSJ, 7/26/00,
p.A26)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_2707)
1971 Nov 24, On Thanksgiving eve
DB Cooper boarded Flight 305 in Portland, Or., and demanded $200,000
with the threat of a bomb. He parachuted from a Northwest Airlines 727
with the money over the Cascade Mountains near Ariel, Wash., and was
never seen again. FBI agent Ralph Himmelsbach wrote the book
NORJAK that described the case. A packet containing $5,880 of the
ransom money was found in 1980 on the north shore of the Columbia
River, just west of the Washington city of Vancouver.
(SFEC, 11/17/96, Z1 p.5)(AP, 11/24/97)
1972 Jan 26, A DC-9 exploded over
Serbska Kamenice, Czechoslovakia, and attendant Vesna Vulovic dropped
33,300 feet and survived following a 27-day coma and a 16-month
recovery. The cause of the explosion has never been established, but
was attributed by the Yugoslav and Czechoslovakian authorities to a
bomb placed on the plane by a Croatian Terrorist group, known as the
Ustasa.
(SFEC, 3/14/99, Z1
p.10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovic)
1972 Feb 5, It was reported that
the United States had agreed to sell 42 F-4 Phantom jets to Israel.
(www.historynet.com/tdih0205.htm)
1972 Apr 7, Richard McCoy
(1942-1974), Vietnam veteran and pilot, hijacked a United Air Lines jet
and extorted $500,000 in copycat version of the DB Cooper crime. He
parachuted into a Utah desert, but was caught with the money in his
house and was sentenced to 40 years in prison. He escaped and died in a
shootout with FBI agent Nicholas O’Hara in Nov, 1974.
(SFEC, 11/17/96, Z1
p.5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_McCoy,_Jr.)
1972 Apr 25, Hans-Werner Grosse
(b.1922), German glider pilot, glided 907.7 miles (1,461 km) in an
AS-W-12.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans-Werner_Grosse)
1972 May 8, A Belgian Sabena
aircraft, bound for Tel Aviv, was hijacked by 4 Palestinians. At Lod
Intl. 2 hijackers were shot and killed by Israeli military personnel,
dressed as ground engineers. One passenger died 8 days later as a
result of her wounds. The two women hijackers were subsequently
sentenced to life imprisonment.
(www.prophetofdoom.net/Islamic_Terrorism_Timeline_1972.Islam)
1972 May 30, Three militants of
the Japanese Red Army (PFL) staged a machine-gun and hand-grenade
attack at the Lod Airport in Israel. 24 people were killed and a 100
injured. The terrorists found refuge in Lebanon until 1997 when they
were arrested. Kozo Okamoto served 13 years of a life sentence in
Israel. In 2000 Lebanon granted asylum to Kozo Okamoto. 4 other
Japanese Red Army members were deported to Japan.
(SFC, 2/19/96, p.A8)(SFC, 3/18/00, p.A3)
1972 Jun 18, BEA Trident crashed
after takeoff from Heathrow killing 118.
(MC, 6/18/02)
1972 Aug 21, The 1st hot air
balloon flight over the Alps.
(SC, 8/21/02)
1972 Oct 26, Igor Sikorsky
(b.1889), Ukraine-born helicopter pioneer, died in Connecticut.
(HNPD, 10/27/98)(ON, 3/06,
p.5)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Sikorsky)
1972 Nov 10, Hijackers diverted a
jet to Detroit, demanding $10 million and ten parachutes.
(HN, 11/10/98)
1972 Nov, Three hijackers
threatened to crash a Southern Airways passenger flight after a
stopover in Birmingham, Ala. They threatened to crash into a research
reactor at Oak Ridge, Tenn. The airline turned over $ 2 million and a
shootout took place in Orlando. The plane flew on to Havana where the
hijackers were arrested for 8 years. They returned to Alabama in 1980
and received 20-25 year sentences.
(USAT, 6/11/03, p.2B)
1972 The Alaska Continental
Development Corp. merged with the financially troubled Alaska Airlines.
The airline soon became profitable in part due to the Alaska oil
pipeline.
(WSJ, 1/7/07, p.A4)(http://tinyurl.com/6obvr7)
1973 Jan 29, Emily Howell Warner
(b.1939) became the 1st woman pilot permanently employed by a
commercial airline. Her first flight as co-pilot was on the Frontier
Airlines DHC-6 Twin Otter August 1, 1974.
(SSFC, 12/14/03,
p.D2)(http://members.tripod.com/~LAMKINS/Emily_Howell_Warner.txt)
1973 Feb 15, The US and Cuba
reached an anti-hijacking agreement.
(SFC, 7/9/96,
p.A8)(www.historyofcuba.com/history/time/timetbl4.htm)
1973 Jul 20, The Japanese Red Army
and Lebanese guerrillas hijacked a Japan Airlines plane over the
Netherlands. The passengers and crew were released in Libya where the
hijackers blew up the plane.
(SFC, 11/9/00,
p.C2)(www.cdi.org/friendlyversion/printversion.cfm?documentID=1771)
1973 Jul 27, Eddie Rickenbacker
(b.1890), American WW I fighter pilot, died in Zurich. He and several
associates bought Eastern Airlines in 1938 and guided it to become one
of the most profitable airlines in the postwar era.
(HNPD,
10/7/98)(www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=324)
1973 Sep 26, Concorde flew from
Washington DC to Paris in 3hr. 33m.
(www.concordesst.com/02.html)
1973 Nov 25, Three Palestinians
hijacked a KLM B747 enroute to New Delhi to Abu Dhabi.
(www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Terrorism/incidents.html)
1974 Feb 22, Samuel Joseph Byck
(1930–1974), an unemployed former tire salesman, attempted to hijack a
plane flying out of Baltimore-Washington International Airport. He
intended to crash into the White House in hopes of killing US President
Richard M. Nixon. Byck killed pilot Fred Jones and a aviation officer
George Neal Ramsburg before he was shot and wounded by gunfire through
the door of a Delta DC-9 airplane. Byck then shot himself in the head.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Byck)
1974 Mar 8, Charles the Gaulle
Airport (aka Roissy I) opened outside of Paris.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_de_Gaulle_International_Airport)
1974 Aug 26, Charles Lindbergh
(72), the first man to fly solo, nonstop across the Atlantic, died at
his home in Hawaii. Lindbergh had 3 illegitimate children in Germany
with Brigitte Hesshaimer, a Munich hat maker. In 1998 A. Scott Berg
authored "Lindbergh." Earlier Lindbergh's daughter authored her memoir
"Under a Wing."
(AP, 8/26/97)(SFEC, 11/15/98, Par p.29)(SSFC,
10/24/04, Par p.2)
1975 Apr 25, 1st Boeing Jetfoil
revenue service began between Hong Kong and Macao.
(SS, 4/25/02)
1975 Tony Ryan (1921-2007),
Irish-born aviation entrepreneur, set up Guinness Peat Aviation with
money from Air Lingus, bankers in London and some of his own cash. GPA
rented planes to airlines around the world. Its IPO in 1992 stumbled
and General Electric Co. picked up most of the company at a bargain
price.
(WSJ, 10/6/07, p.A17)
1976 Apr 26, Pan Am began non-stop
flights between NYC and Tokyo.
(www.wingnet.org/rtw/rtw006hh.htm)
1976 May 24, Britain and France
opened trans-Atlantic Concorde service to Washington. This was the 1st
commercial supersonic transport (SST).
(AP, 5/24/97)
1976 Jun 27, An Air France Airbus
flight AF139, from Tel Aviv to Paris, was hijacked shortly after
departing Athens and taken to Uganda.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_France)
1976 Jul 3, Israel launched its
daring mission to rescue 103 passengers and Air France crew members
being held at Entebbe Airport in Uganda by pro-Palestinian hijackers.
(AP, 7/3/97)
1976 Jul 4, Jonathan Netanyahu,
brother of Benjamin, led and was killed in an Israeli raid called
Operation Thunderball that rescued the [105] hostages held at Entebbe
Airport in Uganda. The raid was by Sayeret Matkal, Israel’s elite
counter-terrorist unit led by Muki Betser, and it freed all but 3 of
the 104 Israeli and Jewish hostages and crew of an Air France jetliner
seized by pro-Palestinian hijackers. The events are described by Muki
Betser and Robert Rosenberg in "Secret Soldier, The True Life of
Israel’s Greatest Commando." 20 Ugandan soldiers, 1 Israeli officer, 3
hostages and 7 hijackers died. The hijacking was linked to Carlos the
Jackal, aka Ilich Ramirez Sanchez.
(SFC, 6/24/96, p.A19)(SFC, 7/16/96, p.E5)(AP,
7/4/97)(SFC,12/11/97, p.C2)(HN, 7/4/98)
1976 Jul 27, Kakuei Tanaka, former
PM (1972-1974) of Japan, was arrested for accepting a bribe from the US
Lockheed Corp. Tanaka was convicted in 1983 but continued to fight the
charges. A. Carl Kotchian (d.2008 at 94), a Lockheed salesman, had
testified that Lockheed had paid $12.6 million in bribes to Japanese
businessmen and government officials.
(www.international.ucla.edu/eas/restricted/lockheed.htm)(Jap. Enc.,
BLDM, p. 216)(SFC, 12/24/08, p.B7)
1976 Jul 28, Eldon Joersz &
Geo Morgan set a world air speed record of 3,530 kph.
(SC, 7/28/02)
1976 Sep 10, 5 Croatian terrorists
captured a TWA-plane at La Guardia Airport, NY.
(http://nycslav.blogspot.com/2005/11/croatian-terroristsin-new-york.html)
1977 Sep 26, Sir Freddie Laker
began his cut-rate "Skytrain" service from London to NY. Laker airways
collapsed into bankruptcy in 1982.
(SSFC, 2/12/06, p.B8)(www.cnn.com/almanac/9709/26/)
1977 Aug 23, The Gossamer Condor 2
flew the first figure-of-eight, a distance of 2,172 meters winning the
first Kremer prize at Minter Field in Shafter, California. It was built
by Dr Paul B. MacCready and piloted by amateur cyclist and hang-glider
pilot Bryan Allen.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossamer_Condor)
1977 Oct 13, A Lufthansa Boeing
737, bound for Frankfurt, was hijacked by Palestinians shortly after
take-off. The plane is diverted to Rome's Fiumicino Airport. Almost all
of the passengers are German vacationers. "This is Captain Martyr
Mohammed speaking," announces one of the hijackers to the Rome
air-traffic controllers. "The group I represent demands the release of
our comrades in German prisons [see Oct 18].
(www.baader-meinhof.com/timeline/1977.html)
1977 Oct 18, West German commandos
stormed a hijacked Lufthansa jetliner that was on the ground in
Mogadishu, Somalia, freeing all 86 hostages and killing three of the
four hijackers, Palestinians of the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine. In 1996 Suhaila al-Sayeh was sentenced to 12 years in prison
by a German court.
(SFC, 11/20/96, p.A17)(AP, 10/17/07)
1977 Nov 22, Regular passenger
service between New York and Europe on the supersonic Concorde began on
a trial basis.
(AP, 11/22/97)
1978 Mar 14, Clayton Thomas (27)
surrendered in Denver after hijacking United Flight 696 from SF.
(SFC, 3/14/03, p.E8)
1978 Aug 17, The helium-filled
balloon, Double Eagle II, crossed the Atlantic in 6 days. The first
successful trans-Atlantic balloon flight ended as Americans Maxie
Anderson, Ben Abruzzo and Larry Newman landed outside Paris.
(AP, 8/17/97)(HN, 8/17/98)
1978 Sep 13, The US Navy's F-18
Hornet makes its public debut during rollout ceremonies in St. Louis,
Mo.
(www.boeing.com/defense-space/military/fa18/fa18_milestones.htm)
1978 Sep 15, Willy Messerschmitt
(b.1898), German aircraft builder, died in Munich.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willy_Messerschmitt)
1978 Oct 24, Pres. Carter signed
the Airline Deregulation Act. The main purpose of the act was to remove
government control from commercial aviation and expose the passenger
airline industry to market forces.
(WSJ, 10/5/04,
p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airline_Deregulation_Act)
1978 Dec 11, Six masked men bound
10 employees at Lufthansa cargo area at NY Kennedy Airport & made
off with $5.8 M in cash & jewelry. Nicholas Pileggi wrote "Wise
Guys," which described his participation in the heist. The robbery
inspired the movie "Goodfellas."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lufthansa_heist)(SFC,
5/10/97, p.A3)
1979 Jan 23, The USAF's 388th
Tactical Fighter Wing at Hill AFB, Utah, became the first unit anywhere
to receive the F-16 Fighting Falcon. Lockheed Corp. produced the F-16
fighter jet. It became the first production military aircraft to
incorporate a fly-by-wire control system.
(WSJ, 3/22/96, p.A-1)(NPub, 2002,
p.23)(www.f-16.net/timeline_1979.html)
1979 Jun 12, Cyclist Bryan Allen
(26) flew the manpowered Gossamer Albatross across the English Channel.
This was the first man powered craft to fly across the English Channel.
The bicycle plane was designed by Paul MacCready (1925-2007).
(Hem, Nov.'95, p.138)(AP, 6/12/97)(WSJ, 9/1/07, p.A4)
1979 Jun 20, Nikola Kavaja (d.2008
at 77) hijacked a US passenger jet with the intention of crashing it
into Yugoslav Communist Party headquarters in Belgrade. He abandoned
his hijack mission in Ireland, saying at the time he was not sure of
the exact location of the downtown party office and did not want
innocent civilians to die if the jet missed the target.
(AP,
11/12/08)(www.nytimes.com/2008/11/12/world/europe/12kavaja.html)
1980 May 8, Maxie Anderson (45)
and his son Kris (23) lifted off from Fort Baker in Marin Ct., Ca., in
a helium-filled balloon to make the 1st transcontinental balloon
crossing.
(SFC, 5/6/05, p.F2)
1980 May 12, Maxie Anderson (45)
and his son Kris (23) completed the 1st balloon crossing of the
American continent as they landed their helium-filled balloon on
Canada’s Gaspe Peninsula. Their journey began May 8 in Marin Ct., Ca.
(SFC, 5/6/05, p.F2)
1980 Jun 10, A package bomb
injured United Airlines Pres. Percy Wood at his home in Lake Forest,
Ill. It was later attributed to the Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski.
(SFEC,11/9/97, Z1
p.4)(www.courttv.com/trials/unabomber/bombings.html)
1981 Feb, John King (1917-2005),
at the behest of PM Margaret Thatcher, became chairman of British
Airways with a brief to clean the company up for privatization. Over
the next 12 years he steered the company to profitability.
(Econ, 7/16/05, p.54)(http://tinyurl.com/3xl527)
1981 Mar 2, A Pakistan Airways
Boeing 720 was hijacked by 3 Pakistani terrorists. The passengers and
crew were released March 15 in Syria.
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/15/newsid_2818000/2818437.stm)
1981 May 1, American Airlines
instituted the 1st "frequent flyer" program to keep customers returning.
(SSFC, 12/14/03, p.D2)(http://tinyurl.com/2uvcut)
1981 May 26, 14 people were killed
when a Marine jet crashed onto the flight deck of the aircraft carrier
USS Nimitz off Florida.
(AP, 5/26/97)
1981 Jul 7, The 1st solar-powered
aircraft, Solar Challenger, crossed the English Channel flying 163
miles from Paris to Canterbury. It was created by Dupont and Paul
MacCready.
(www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/news/FactSheets/FS-054-DFRC.html)(Econ,
9/8/07, p.88)
1981 Aug 3, US air traffic
controllers (PATCO) went on strike, despite a warning from President
Reagan they would be fired. Most of the 13,000 controllers defied
Reagan’s order to return to work within 48 hours and were fired.
(AP, 8/3/02)(SFC, 10/4/02, p.A17)
1981 Oct 22, The Professional Air
Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) was decertified by the US
federal government for its strike the previous August.
(AP, 10/22/06)
1981 Nov 12, The Double Eagle V
landed in California 84 hours and 31 minutes following its Nov 10
launch in Japan. It was the 1st balloon to cross the Pacific ocean.
Rocky Aoki (1938-2008), founder of the Benihana steakhouse (1964), was
part of the crew.
(http://www.benihana.com/ballooning_history.asp)(SFC, 7/12/08, p.B5)
1982 Feb 5, Laker Airways, founded
in 1966 by Sir Freddie Laker, collapsed owing $351M.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laker_Airways)
1982 May 12, Braniff Airlines
ceased operations. N601BN "747 Braniff Place" made the very last
Braniff flight from Hawaii to Dallas/Fort Worth on May 13.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braniff_Airways)
1982 Jul 2, Larry Walters
(1949-1993), a Los Angeles truck driver, flew 16,000 feet into the air
with 42 helium balloons attached to a lawn chair. Walters surprised an
airline pilot, who radioed the control tower that he had just passed a
guy in a lawn chair with a gun. The weapon was to shoot balloons and
descend. Walters paid a $1,500 penalty for violating air traffic rules.
Eleven years later, he committed suicide at age 44.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Walters)(SFC,
7/3/02, p.A17)(AP, 7/10/07)
1982 Aug 11, Pan Am flight 830
from Tokyo to Honolulu was bombed. One boy was killed and 15 people
were injured. In 1998 Mohammed Rashid, a Palestinian national, was
turned over to the US by Egypt on charges related to the bombing.
(SFC, 6/4/98,
p.A4)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_830)
1982 Charles F. Ehret (1923-2007),
a scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, released the “Argonne
Anti-Jet-Lag Diet.”
(WSJ, 3/10/07, p.A4)
1982 Braniff Airlines, based in
Dallas, ceased operations with $1 billion in debt. Harding Lawrence
(d.2002 at 81) led the company from 1965-1980.
(SFC, 1/21/02, p.B5)
1982 The Pentagon acknowledged for
the 1st time the existence of a "stealth" aircraft.
(SSFC, 12/14/03, p.D2)
1982 A US federal law was passed
that prohibited airport revenue from being transferred to local city
general funds.
(SFC, 7/20/96, p.A11)
1983 Jun 2, A toilet caught fire
on Air Canada's DC-9 and 23 died at Cincinnati.
(SC, 6/2/02)
1983 Jun 27, Maxie Anderson and
Don Ida died during a balloon race.
(SC, 6/27/02)
1983 In Saudi Arabia the King
Khalid Int'l. Airport opened in Riyadh and was touted as the largest in
the world. One of the terminals was mothballed at opening and remained
so in 2008.
(WSJ, 8/20/96, p.A1)(Econ, 4/26/08, p.15)
1984 Jun 22, Richard Branson led
the inaugural flight of his Virgin Airlines from London to Newark, NJ.
(Econ, 6/16/07, SR p.10)
1984 Dec 4, A five-day hijack
drama began as four armed men seized a Kuwaiti airliner en route to
Pakistan and forced it to land in Tehran, where the hijackers killed
American passenger Charles Hegna.
(AP, 12/4/04)
1984 Dec 9, In Iran a five-day
hijack drama ended when Iranian commandos captured the Kuwaiti plane. 4
armed men had seized a Kuwaiti airliner en route to Pakistan and forced
it to land in Tehran, where the hijackers killed American passenger
Charles Hegna.
(AP, 12/4/04)
1984 Dec 14, The maiden flight of
NASA’s X-29, a forward swept wing aircraft, took place.
(NPub, 2002, p.24)
c1984 Air Serv International was
founded to ferry humanitarian workers to world hot spots.
(WSJ, 12/8/03, p.B1)
1985 Gulf Air, a joint venture
between Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar, decided to cut back its
services to Dubai. This prompted Dubai to launch its own airline. The
Emirates Airline began in the UAR with 2 rented planes and a $10
million investment from Dubai’s ruling family under the direction of
Maurice Flanagan. In 2005 the state-owned operation planned to double
its 73-plane fleet.
(WSJ, 1/11/05, p.A1)(Econ, 6/5/10, p.75)
1985 Ryanair was founded by Cathal
and Declan Ryan (after whom the company is named), Liam Lonergan (owner
of an Irish tour operator named Club Travel), and noted Irish
businessman Tony Ryan (1936-2007), founder of Guinness Peat Aviation
and father of Cathal and Declan. The small airline, flying a short hop
from Waterford to London, grew to become one of Europe's largest
carriers.
(WSJ, 10/6/07,
p.A17)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanair)
1986 Sep 5, The Pakistan army
stormed a hijacked US B-747 in Karachi and 22 people were killed. In
2001 Zayd Hassan Abd Al-latif Masud Al Safarini, jailed in Pakistan for
15 years, arrived in Alaska and was expected to face a 1991 indictment
for the 1986 hijacking of a Pan Am jet. In 2003 Safarini pleaded guilty
and agreed to 3 life sentences plus 25 years. On Jan 3, 2008, Pakistani
authorities freed and deported four Palestinians convicted in the
hijacking.
(SFC, 10/2/01, p.A3)(SFC, 12/17/03, p.A4)(AP,
9/5/06)(AP, 1/3/08)
1986 Dec 23, The experimental
airplane Voyager, piloted by Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager, completed the
first non-stop, round-the-world flight without refueling as it landed
safely at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
(AP, 12/23/97)
1987 Mar, Britain’s PM Margaret
Thatcher privatized BAA (British Airports Authority). From a lethargic
government bureaucracy it grew to become a major airport operator.
(TMC, 1994, p.1987)(WSJ, 9/24/96, p.A1)
1987 Apr 18, An unconscious
skydiver was rescued by another diver in mid-air.
(MC, 4/18/02)
1987 Japan privatized Japan
Airlines (JAL). By 2001 it required 3 state bailouts.
(Econ, 10/3/09, p.76)
1988 Mar 20, Eight-year-old
DeAndra Anrig found herself airborne when the string of her kite was
snagged by an airplane flying over Shoreline Park in Mountain View,
Calif. Not seriously hurt, she was lifted 10 feet off the ground and
carried 100 feet until she let go.
(AP, 3/20/98)
1988 Apr 23, A federal ban on
smoking during domestic airline flights of two hours or less went into
effect.
(AP, 4/23/98)(WSJ, 1/27/04, p.D12)
1988 Apr 23, Greek cycling
champion Kanellos Kanellopoulos pedaled a self-powered aircraft named
Daedalus 88 for 74 miles. The MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics
Department's Daedalus was a human-powered aircraft flew from Iraklion
Air Force Base on Crete, Greece, crashing in the sea just short of the
island of Santorini in 3 hours, 54 minutes. Daedalus 87 had crashed on
Rogers Dry Lakebed on 17 February 1988, and was rebuilt as a backup.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Daedalus)
1988 Jun 8, Nippon Airways
announced that painting eyeballs on Jets cut bird collisions by 20%.
(MC, 6/8/02)
1988 Dec 2, The 5 gunmen, who
hijacked Soviet Aeroflot jet, surrendered in Israel.
(http://tinyurl.com/hkvkb)
1988 Tony Ryan, the founder of
Guinness Peat Aviation, brought on Michael O’Leary to do whatever was
necessary to make Ryanair profitable. In 2007 Alan Ruddock authored
“Michael O’Leary: A Life in Full Flight.”
(Econ, 8/25/07, p.76)
1989 Mar 3, Machinists struck
Eastern Airlines and pilots honored the picket lines.
(SC,
3/3/02)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Airlines)
1989 Mar 4, Eastern Airlines
machinists went on strike and were joined by pilots and flight
attendants.
(AP, 3/4/99)
1989 Mar 5, Machinists striking
Eastern Airlines withdrew an immediate threat to picket the nation's
railroads, after a federal judge issued an order temporarily
prohibiting rail workers from honoring the Eastern picket lines.
(AP, 3/5/99)
1989 Mar 6, With nearly 90 percent
of its pilots honoring the picket lines of striking machinists, Eastern
Airlines shut down operations on all but three routes.
(AP, 3/6/99)
1989 Mar 9, Eastern Airlines filed
for bankruptcy.
(HN, 3/9/98)
1989 May 12, The nation's largest
airline computer reservation system, the American Airlines Sabre
system, shut down for nearly 12 hours, disrupting the operations of
thousands of travel agencies nationwide.
(AP, 5/12/99)
1989 May 25, Eastern Airlines
graduated its 1st class of non-union pilots.
(SC, 5/25/02)
1989 Jul 17, The controversial B-2
Stealth bomber underwent its first test flight at Edwards Air Force
Base in California, two days after a technical problem forced a
postponement.
(AP, 7/17/99)
1989 Aug 13, 2 hot-air balloons
crashed at Alice Springs, Australia, and 13 were killed.
(MC, 8/13/02)
1989 Nov 1, A Scandinavian
Airlines System (SAS) and Finnair ban on smoking took effect for all
Nordic flights.
(http://tc.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/13/suppl_1/i20)
1989 Nov 21, A law banning smoking
on most domestic flights signed by President Bush.
(http://tinyurl.com/gf6zq)
1989 Nov 22, Eastern Airlines
pilots and flight attendants ended their strike. President Bush vetoed
a bill that would set up panel to investigate walkout. The strike by
machinists continued.
(http://openweb.tvnews.vanderbilt.edu/1989-11/1989-11-22-ABC-11.html)
1990 Apr 18, Bankruptcy court
forced Frank Lorenzo (b.1940) to give up Eastern Airlines.
(www.airlinesafety.com/Unions/UnionVictoryAtEastern.htm)
1990 Aug 20, Three former
Northwest Airlines pilots were convicted in Minneapolis of flying while
intoxicated.
(AP, 8/20/00)
1990 Sep 29, The YF22 fighter, an
American prototype fighter aircraft designed by Northrop and McDonnell
Douglas, was first flown by Lockheed test pilot Dave Ferguson.
(NPub, 2002,
p.25)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northrop_YF-23)
1990 Oct 11, The first flight of
the X-31 took place. The collaborative US-German Rockwell-MBB X-31
Enhanced Fighter Maneuverability program was designed to test fighter
thrust vectoring technology.
(NPub, 2002, p.25)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-31)
1990 Smoking was banned on US
domestic flights 6 hours or less.
(WSJ, 1/27/04, p.D12)
1991 Jun, Alaska Airlines began
the 1st regularly scheduled service from the US to the Soviet Far East.
(WSJ, 1/7/07, p.A4)
1991 Aug 27, The first flight of
the YF23 V-22 Osprey tiltrotor took place.
(NPub, 2002, p.25)
1991 Sep 17, The first flight of
the McDonnell Douglas C-17 military cargo transport took place.
(NPub, 2002, p.25)
1991 Dec 4, Pan American World
Airways ceased operations. Pan Am’s records went to the Univ. of
Florida and artifacts went to the Historical Museum of South Florida.
However, a new, smaller version of Pan Am was later formed.
(AP, 12/4/01)(SSFC, 11/4/07, p.A9)
1992 Jun 26, Supreme Court ruled
that fund soliciting can be banned at airports.
(MC, 6/26/02)
1992 Boeing and Airbus reached a
truce whereby EU aid to Airbus was limited to a third of development
costs and Boeing government subsidies to 4% of its turnover. The truce
ended in 1998 as Airbus approached 50% of the market.
(Econ, 6/4/05, p.59)
1993 Nov 18, American Airlines
flight attendants went on strike. They ended their job action four days
later.
(AP, 11/18/98)
1993 Nov, Wang Zhihua boarded a
scheduled flight from Hangzhou to Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian
province opposite Taiwan. He showed fake explosives to the crew, saying
he had a bomb, and forced the plane to fly to Taiwan. In 2008 Wang was
returned to China and sentenced to 12 years in prison.
(AP, 12/5/08)
1994 Feb 10, Jeannie Flynn
(b.1966)), the first female combat pilot in the US Air Force, finished
flight training in the F-15.
(http://tinyurl.com/n5ehhg)(NPub, 2002, p.26)
1994 Jun 7, Vicki Van Meter 912)
of Meadville, Pa., completed a trans-Atlantic flight, landing in
Glasgow, Scotland. She was accompanied by her flight instructor.
(www.zinkle.com/p/articles/mi_m1590/is_n3_v51/ai_15823355)
1994 Jun, Carlo Toto, an Italian
contractor, purchased a Boeing 737 at a court auction and began a
small-charter airline service that became Air One.
(WSJ, 9/24/04, p.A13)
1994 Jul 12, The shareholders and
employees of United Airlines approved a deal giving the majority
ownership to the employees (76,000+).
(Hem, Dec. 94, p.13)
1994 Oct 31, An American Eagle
French-built ATR-72, en route from Indianapolis to Chicago, crashed in
Roselawn, Ind., and killed 68 people. In 1997 American Airlines and 7
other companies settled a suit filed by relatives for $110 million.
(SFC, 9/23/97, p.A4)(AP, 10/31/97)
1994 An investor group led by
Banco Bozano, Simonsen SA, bought the loss-ridden aircraft maker
Embraer SA from the Brazilian government.
(WSJ, 3/21/97, p.A17)(WSJ, 9/13/04, p.A8)
1995 Feb 28, Denver International
Airport opened after 16 months of delays and $3.2 billion in budget
overruns. A $250 million automated baggage handling system contributed
to the delays. United Airlines gave up on the system in 2005.
(AP, 2/28/98)(WSJ, 6/7/05, p.D5)
1995 Nov, Air One launched service
between Rome and Milan, a route on which Alitalia had held a monopoly.
(WSJ, 9/24/04, p.A13)
1995 The US Predator surveillance
drone was 1st used over Bosnia. In 2001 it was equipped with the
hell-fire missile and used over Afghanistan. This unmanned aerial
vehicle (UAV) flew as slowly as a Cessna.
(SFC, 11/23/01, p.A12)(Econ, 12/8/07, TQ p.22)
1995 Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou
(b.1967), a Greek-Cypriot-born British entrepreneur, founded
easyJet, a budget airline.
(Econ, 11/22/08,
p.75)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EasyJet)
1995 Mexico created Cintra, a
holding company to rescue Aeromexico and Mexicana airlines.
(Econ, 3/26/05, p.63)
1996 Jan 4, The Boeing Sikorsky
Comanche helicopter was unveiled.
(NPub, 2002, p.26)
1996 Aug 8, Frank A. Whittle (89),
inventor of the Jet engine, died.
(MC, 8/8/02)
1996 Fokker went bankrupt,
and the last new Fokker-50 was delivered to Ethiopian Airlines in May,
1997. Stork, another Dutch company, bought a large part of Fokker's
assets, and continued to be a main provider of parts and service for
Fokker planes.
(AP, 2/10/04)
1997 May 5, American Airlines'
pilots ratified a contract, ending nearly three years of negotiations.
(AP, 5/5/98)
1997 May 10, In Britain Jennifer
Murray and co-pilot Quentin Smith began a round-the-world helicopter
trip in an effort to become the first woman to pilot the globe in a
helicopter. She completed her flight on Aug 15.
(SFC, 7/23/97, p.A3)(SFC, 8/16/97, p.A11)
1997 May 17, The first flight of
NASA’s subscale remotely piloted X-36 Tailless Fighter Agility Research
Aircraft took place.
(www.dfrc.nasa.gov/gallery/Photo/X-36/index.html)
1997 Jun 28, Robert Schuller, TV
evangelist, attacked a flight attendant.
(MC, 6/28/02)
1997 Aug, Harry Stonecipher, CEO
of McDonnell Douglas, negotiated a merger with Boeing.
(WSJ, 3/7/05, p.A1)
1998 Apr 30, United and Delta
airlines formed an alliance that would control one-third of all U.S.
passenger seats.
(AP, 4/30/99)
1998 May 10, The FAA grounded
older models of the Boeing 737 after mandatory inspections of some
aircraft found extensive wear in power lines through wing fuel tanks.
(SFC, 5/11/98)(AP, 5/10/08)
1998 Jun 30, In Malaysia the new
Kuala Lumpur Int’l. Airport (KLIA) began operations.
(SFEC, 7/5/98, p.T3)(Econ, 2/7/09, p.35)
1998 Sep 10, The Northwest
Airlines and its pilots reached an agreement to end their 13-day strike.
(SFC, 9/11/98, p.A3)(AP, 9/10/99)
1998 Sep 10, Air Canada and its
pilots reached an agreement to end a 9-day strike. [see Sep 14]
(SFC, 9/11/98, p.A3)
1999 Mar 20, Balloonists Bertrand
Piccard of Switzerland and Brian Jones of Britain became the first
aviators to fly a hot-air balloon around the world nonstop. They
established an around the world record after floating over Mauritania
at 1:54 a.m. PST and won a $1 million prize from Anheuser-Busch as the
first aviators to fly a hot-air balloon around the world nonstop.
(SFEC, 3/21/99, p.A21)(AP, 3/20/00)
1999 May 31, It was reported that
Mike Moshier (51), founder of Millennium Jet Inc. in Santa Clara, Ca.,
had developed the SoloTrek XFV, a single passenger flying vehicle, that
could fly at 80 mph for up to 90 minutes as high as 10,000 feet on a
single tank of 87-octane gas.
(SFC, 5/31/99, p.E3)
1999 Jul 23, In Japan Yuzi
Nishizawa (b.1970) attempted to hijack flight 61 from Tokyo and stabbed
to death pilot Naoyuki Nagashima (51). The hijacker was overcome and
the plane landed safely with 516 passengers. On March 23, 2005,
Nishizawa was found to be guilty, but of unsound mind and thus only
partly responsible for his actions. Presiding judge Hisaharu Yasui
handed Nishizawa a life sentence in 2005.
(SFC, 7/24/99,
p.A9)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANA_Flight_61)
1999 Dec 6, SabreTech, an aircraft
maintenance company, was convicted of mishandling the oxygen canisters
blamed for the cargo hold fire that caused the 1996 ValuJet crash in
the Everglades that killed 110 people. Eight of the nine counts were
later thrown out on appeal.
(AP, 12/6/04)
1999 Dec 20, Singapore Airlines
agreed to buy a 49% stake in Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic.
(www.iht.com/articles/1999/12/21/virgin.2.t.php)
1999 David Neeleman founded
JetBlue Airways, an American low-cost airline. In Dec, 2008, he founded
Azul (meaning blue), his Brazilian airline.
(Econ, 8/29/09,
p.58)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JetBlue)
1999 Jets began landing on the
main island of the archipelago of Socotra, ruled by Yemen. Some 50,000
native Socotris spoke 4 dialects of an ancient language unintelligible
to other Yemenis. It has been described as the most alien-looking place
on Earth.
(Econ, 4/24/10,
p.46)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socotra)
2000 Jul 1, Canada and Russia
began to allow regular commercial air flights over the North Pole.
(WSJ, 6/8/00, p.A19)
2000 Jul 10, DASA (minus MTU)
merged with Aerospatiale-Matra of France and Construcciones
Aeronáuticas SA (CASA) of Spain to form the European Aeronautic
Defence and Space Company (EADS). DASA was founded as Deutsche
Aerospace AG on May 19, 1989 by the merger of Daimler-Benz's aerospace
interests (MTU, Dornier and two divisions of AEG). In July 1989 the two
AEG divisions were themselves merged within Deutsche Aerospace to form
Telefunken Systemtechnik (TST). In December 1989 Daimler-Benz acquired
Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB) and merged it into DASA.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DASA)
2000 Aug 15, British Airways
joined Air France in grounding its Concorde supersonic jets in the wake
of the July 25th crash near Paris that claimed 113 lives.
(SFC, 8/16/00, p.A17)(AP, 8/15/01)
2000 Sep 15, The new San Francisco
Int’l. Terminal opened at a cost of $950 million. SFO operations at
Terminal 2 ceased in December as part of a $2.5 billion airport master
plan.
(SFC, 9/16/00, p.A15)(SFC, 5/13/08, p.D4)
2001 Jan 10, American Airlines
(AMR) called its plan to acquire Trans World Airlines (TWA) beneficial
to consumers. TWA’s board approved plans for bankruptcy and accept the
buyout offer. TWA had used St. Louis as a hub.
(WSJ, 1/11/01, p.A3)(WSJ, 1/2/02, p.R12)(Econ,
6/28/08, p.37)
2001 Jan, In Brazil Gol Airlines
was launched by the Constantino family, which ran a fleet of buses.
Employee owned Varig had 40% of the market, but was crumbling under
competition from TAM. Varig went into bankruptcy in 2005.
(Econ, 4/28/07, p.76)
2001 Aug 10, A tourist helicopter
crashed near the Grand Canyon and 6 people were killed.
(SSFC, 8/12/01, p.A8)
2001 cAug 26, In the French Alps a
hot-air balloon caught fire after apparently hitting a high voltage
wire and 6 people were killed.
(WSJ, 8/27/01, p.A1)
2001 Sep 11, Two planes left
Boston’s Logan Airport. Both planes were hijacked and flown into the
twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. In the same
morning, another plane left Dulles International Airport in Virginia.
It was hijacked, turned around and flown into the Pentagon building. A
fourth plane from Newark Airport in New Jersey was hijacked and steered
back toward Washington, D.C. It crashed in rural Pennsylvania
after people on board tried to stop the hijackers. Four groups of
terrorists used knives, hijacked 4 airplanes, and were linked to Osama
bin Laden’s al Qaeda organization. The terrorist attacks threatened to
prompt a global recession. Thousands of people were stranded and air
cargo was paralyzed as the FAA grounded all US flights.
(http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/11/chronology.attack/)
8:45 am EST: American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing
767 carrying 92 people, crashed into the North tower of the World Trade
Center in NYC. It was enroute from Boston to LA.
9:03 am EST: United Airlines Flight 175, a Boeing
767 carrying 65 people, crashed into the South Tower of the WTC. It was
enroute from Boston to LA.
9:38 am EST: American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing
757 carrying 64 people, crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington, Va. It
was enroute from Washington DC to LA.
9:40 am EST The FAA grounded all domestic flights
and ordered all airborne craft to land immediately.
9:43
am EST: American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757 carrying 64 people,
crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. It was enroute from
Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles, California
10:00 am EST The South Tower of the WTC collapsed.
10:10 am United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757
carrying 45 people, crashed southeast of Pittsburgh. The plane had left
Newark for SF but was believed to be directed by hijackers to Camp
David. Passengers appeared to have overcome the hijackers. In 2002 it
was reported that Congress was the target.
10:29 am EST The North Tower of the WTC collapsed.
1:04
pm EST: President George W. Bush puts the U.S. military on “high alert.”
5:25 pm EST: Building 7 of the WTC complex
collapsed.
8:30
pm EST: President George W. Bush, in a televised address, vowed to find
those responsible for the attacks.
In 2005 NYC said it was unable to identify the
remains of 1,161 of the 2,749 people killed in the Sep 11 attacks. The
ultimate death toll would be: 2,797 at the World Trade Center Towers,
189 killed at the Pentagon and 44 died in Pennsylvania … a total of
3,030.
(SFC, 9/12/01, p.A6,10,12)(WSJ, 9/12/01, p.A1)(SFC,
11/6/01, p.A6)(WSJ, 9/12/01, p.A1,3) (WSJ, 2/24/05, p.A1)
2001 Sep 11, Rick Rescorla,
security chief at Morgan Stanley, evacuated 2,700 MS employees from the
WTC and was killed trying to save others. In 2002 James B. Stewart
authored "Heart of a Soldier," a biography of Rescorla.
(WSJ, 9/11/02, p.D10)
2001 Sep 11, World leaders
expressed outrage at terrorist attacks in NYC and the Pentagon and
pledged solidarity with the US. In the West Bank town of Nablus, some
3,000 people celebrated the attacks and chanted "God is great." Later
the estimates of the WTC dead dropped to 4,396. In 2004 the count was
reduced to 2,749.
(SFC, 9/12/01, p.A14)(SFC, 11/3/01, p.A3)(SFC,
11/21/01, p.A2)(USAT, 10/30/03, p.7A)(WSJ, 1/26/04, p.A1)
2001 Sep 11, Peter Alderman (25)
was among those murdered by terrorists while attending a conference at
the World Trade Center. His parents later established the Peter C.
Alderman Foundation in his name to alleviate the suffering of victims
of terrorism and mass violence in post-conflict countries by providing
physicians and other indigenous caregivers with the tools to treat
mental anguish using Western medical therapies combined with local
healing traditions.
(www.petercaldermanfoundation.org/about/index.html)
2001 Oct 2, Cash-strapped Swissair
shut down flight operations and stranded thousands of passengers around
the globe.
(SFC, 10/3/01, p.D3)
2001 Oct 4, Swissair resumed
flying following a 2-day shut down propped by a $281 million Swiss
government loan. [see Jan 31, 2002]
(SFC, 10/5/01, p.B4)
2001 Dec 22, Passengers and flight
attendants subdued Richard Colvin Reid on AA Flight 63 from Paris to
Miami. He appeared to have explosive materials in his shoes. The flight
was diverted to Boston and the FBI confirmed that his shoes were packed
with explosives. Reid had trained with Lashkar-e-Taiba. French police
identified the man as Tariq Raja (28), a Sri Lankan traveling on a
British passport. The sneakers contained pentaerythritol tetranitrate
(PETN) and triacetone triperoxide (TATP). On Jan 30, 2003 Reid was
sentenced to life in prison. A 2nd plot involved Saajid Badat, who
backed out of similar plan on a different flight. In 2005 a British
judge sentenced Badat (25) to 13 years in prison.
(SSFC, 12/23/01, p.A1)(SFC, 12/24/01, p.A1,6)(SFC,
1/31/03, p.A1)(SFC, 4/23/05, p.A4)(WSJ, 12/8/08, p.A6)
2001 Dec, Airbus announced the
development of a huge double-decker jet, the A-380, capable of carrying
up to 1,000 passengers.
(SSFC, 12/14/03, p.D2)
2001 Tony Fernandez (b.1964),
Malaysian entrepreneur, acquired AirAsia and soon re-launched it as a
low-cost domestic carrier with 2 B737 planes purchased from a Malaysian
conglomerate. Ryanair signed on with a 5% stake. By 2009 the company
had 76 planes. By the end of 2004 the low cost airline planned to have
30 planes.
(Econ, 3/13/04, p.63)(Econ, 2/7/09, p.35)(Econ,
3/21/09, p.72)(http://tinyurl.com/cxf3hz)
2002 Jan 31, Crossair, a regional
carrier and successor airline to the bankrupt Swissair, announced plans
that will make it Europe's 4th largest international airline, under the
new name Swiss.
(EB, 2002, p.11)(Econ, 2/14/04, p.10)
2002 Jul 10, A unified US Senate
approved harsh new penalties for corporate fraud and document-shredding
as part of an accounting oversight bill. The House approved, 310-113, a
measure to allow pilots to carry guns in the cockpit to defend their
planes against terrorists. President George W. Bush later signed the
measure into law.
(AP, 7/10/07)
2002 Aug 11, US Airways, the 6th
largest US airline, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
(SFC, 8/12/02, p.A1)
2002 Aug 13, American Airlines
said it would eliminate 7,000 and cut flights.
(AP, 8/13/03)
2002 Sep 2, Glenn Tilton was named
chairman, president and chief executive officer of United Airlines
parent UAL Corp.
(AP, 9/2/03)
2002 Dec 4, A US federal board
rejected a 1.8 billion loan guarantee for United Airlines.
(SFC, 12/5/02, p.A1)(WSJ, 12/5/02, p.A1)
2002 Dec 9, United Airlines filed
for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and reported losses of $20 million a day.
(SFC, 12/9/02, p.A1)(SFC, 12/10/02, p.A1)
2002 Christopher Chant authored "A
Century of Triumph: The History of Aviation."
(WSJ, 11/1/02, p.W10)
2002 Losses for the 9 biggest US
airlines totaled 11.2 billion for the year.
(WSJ, 1/2/04, p.R8)
2003 Jan 15, Lufthansa introduced
Internet access to passengers on a flight from Germany to Washington DC.
(SFC, 1/15/03, p.B1)
2003 Mar, Hooters Air started
flying between Atlanta and Myrtle Beach.
(Econ, 6/28/03, p.65)
2003 Mar 19, A Cuban airliner was
hijacked to Key West. 6 hijackers took control of the plane without
telling the 25 passengers and six crew members about their asylum
plans. The six were later convicted of federal hijacking charges.
(SFC, 3/20/03, p.A15)(AP, 3/19/04)
2003 Mar 24, The National
Transportation Safety Board concluded that Boeing 737 rudder problems
caused two fatal airline crashes and nearly triggered a third.
(AP, 3/24/04)
2003 Apr 1, Air Canada filed for
bankruptcy protection.
(WSJ, 1/2/04, p.R9)
2003 May 31, Air France planned to
ground its last 5 Concorde airplanes. The Air France Concorde, the
world's fastest and most luxurious passenger jet, flew from New York to
Paris for the last time.
(SFC, 4/11/03, p.B5)(AP, 5/30/03)(SSFC, 6/1/03, p.A2)
2003 Jun 12, Air France turned the
oldest of its Concordes over to the Smithsonian Institution in
Washington.
(AP, 6/12/04)
2003 Aug 12, A balsa-mylar model
airplane set a long distance flight record of 1,888.3 miles as it
landed in Ireland from Newfoundland.
(WSJ, 8/13/03, p.A1)
2003 Aug 29, The board of Air
France approved a deal to combine with Dutch KLM under a holding
company to form the world's #3 airline.
(WSJ, 1/2/04, p.R12)
2003 Aug, Vietnam took possession
of the 1st of 4 new Boeing 777-200 ER jetliners purchased in part with
a loan from the Export-Import Bank of the US.
(SSFC, 8/24/03, p.I6)
2003 Oct 8, Vietnam and the United
States tentatively agreed to allow the first commercial flights between
the two countries since the end of the Vietnam War.
(AP, 10/8/03)
2003 Oct 24, British Airways
retired the Concorde. 3 Concordes swooped into Heathrow Airport,
joining in a spectacular finale to the era of luxury supersonic jet
travel.
(WSJ, 10/2/03, p.A1)(AP, 10/24/03)
2003 Dec 1, Boeing Company
chairman and CEO Phil Condit resigned unexpectedly. Boeing was involved
in a series of procurement violations that also led to the firing of
CFO Michael Sears, who ended up serving time in prison for illegal
employment negotiations. In 2006 Boeing agreed to pay $615 million to
end 3 years of Justice Department investigations.
(AP, 12/1/04)(WSJ, 5/15/06, p.A1)
2003 The Int’l. Civil Aviation
Association (ICOA) issued technical specifications for passports to
contain an integrated circuit to be activated by a radio signal to
broadcast stored data.
(Econ, 2/19/05, p.75)
2003 The cost of ultralights fell
to under $20,000.
(Econ, 8/9/03, p.66)
2003 Abu Dhabi launched its Etihad
airline by royal decree. In 2004 it made an $8 billion order for new
airplanes.
(Econ, 6/5/10, p.76)
2003 Afghanistan 1st private
airline, Kam Air, was launched.
(Econ, 8/21/04, p.35)
2003 Captain G.R. Gopinath
launched Air Deccan, India’s 1st low-cost airline.
(Econ, 3/10/07, p.59)
2004 Jan 12, It was reported that
a new US Homeland Security program planned to screen airline passengers
according to a color code based on computerized data.
(SFC, 1/13/04, p.A1)
2004 Feb 3, Singapore Airlines
began 18½ hour non-stop flights to Los Angeles.
(USAT, 2/5/04, p.1B)
2004 Jun 4, Virgin USA chose SFO
as its home base.
(SFC, 6/5/04, A1)
2004 Sep 12, US Airways filed for
bankruptcy protection.
(AP, 9/13/04)
2004 Sep 30, Officials at US 115
int’l. airports and 14 seaports began photographing and electronically
fingerprinting travelers from 27 industrialized nations.
(SFC, 10/1/04, p.A3)
2004 Dec 24, The Comair computer
system crashed after it was overwhelmed by cancellations and delays due
to winter storms in the Ohio Valley. Comair was forced to cancel all of
its 1,100 flights the next day. US AIR cancelled numerous flights and
baggage problems rippled through its system for days.
(SFC, 12/27/04, p.A3)
2004 Stephen Budiansky authored
"Air Power," a history of military aviation.
(WSJ, 4/12/04, p.D8)
2004 Alastair Gordon authored
“Naked Airport: A Cultural History of the World’s Most Revolutionary
Structure.”
(SSFC, 9/5/04, p.M1)
2005 Jan 18, In France Airbus
unveiled the 840-passenger A380, the world's biggest passenger jet, in
a glitzy ceremony in which the leaders of France, Britain, Germany and
Spain hailed Europe's victory over the US as the new king of the
commercial skies.
(AP, 1/18/05)
2005 Jan 20, Delta Airlines
reported a record $5.2 billion loss for 2004.
(SFC, 1/21/05, p.C1)
2005 Feb 15, The Falcon 7X, a
business jet designed and built by the French aviation company
Dassault, was displayed for the first time. It was the first plane to
be digitally modeled in 3-dimensions and required no prototype.
(Econ, 6/18/05, p.78)(http://tinyurl.com/lxlgt2)
2005 Mar 11, Canada’s Jetsgo
announced in the dead of night that it was going out of business and
grounding all flights immediately as thousands of passengers prepared
to jet away for March break, one of the busiest travel periods of the
year.
(AP, 3/11/05)
2005 Mar 17, Italian airline
Alitalia SpA said that the latest strike by flight attendants could
plunge the struggling carrier into bankruptcy.
(AP, 3/17/05)
2005 May 20, US Airways and
America West merged in a $1.5 billion deal.
(SFC, 5/20/05, p.C1)
2005 Jun 13, The Paris Air Show
opened. The Russian Lavochkin Association demonstrated a new escape pod
for people trapped in tall, burning buildings.
(Econ, 6/11/05, p.60)(Econ, 6/25/05, p.81)
2005 Jun 19, A new, domestic
French low-cost airline, Air Turquoise, took to the skies, opening
budget routes from the northeast city of Reims to Bordeaux, Marseille
and Nice.
(AP, 6/19/05)
2005 Jul 21, Airbus said it has
received an order for 20 of its twin-aisle A330 passenger jets from Air
China, in a deal worth about 3.2 billion euros ($3.9 billion) at list
prices.
(AP, 7/21/05)
2005 Oct 10, Japan's space agency
conducted a test flight of a supersonic jet prototype in the Australian
Outback.
(AP, 10/10/05)
2005 Nov 19, President Bush
arrived in Beijing for talks with Chinese leaders following the APEC
meeting in South Korea. A US official said China will buy 70 Boeing 737
airliners as President Bush arrived on a visit expected to include
discussion of Beijing's surging trade surplus with the US.
(AP, 11/19/05)(AP, 11/19/06)
2005 Nov 29, CINTRA sold Mexicana
airlines and its subsidiary, Click Mexicana, to the Mexican hotel chain
Grupo Posadas for USD$165.5 million.
(Econ, 8/14/10,
p.53)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexicana_de_Aviaci%C3%B3n)
2005 In India Vijay Mallya,
chairman of Bangalore based United Breweries, launched Kingfisher
Airlines, named after UB’s best-selling beer.
(Econ, 7/16/05, p.64)
2006 Feb 9, Sir Freddie Laker
(83), pioneer of low-cost airline travel, died in Florida.
(WSJ, 2/11/06, p.A1)
2006 Feb 11, Adventurer Steve
Fossett completed the longest nonstop flight in aviation history,
flying 26,389 miles in about 76 hours, but he had to land early in
southern England because of mechanical problems.
(AP, 2/11/06)
2006 Mar 27, Malaysia’s government
said it will end subsidies to flag carrier Malaysia Airlines and let it
operate only 19 domestic routes, in competition with budget carrier
AirAsia, under a major restructuring that will shed thousands of jobs.
(AP, 3/27/06)
2006 Apr 10, Mexican soldiers
seized 128 suitcases packed with 5.7 tons of cocaine worth more than
$100 million from a commercial plane arriving from Venezuela. Smugglers
had purchased the DC-9 plane with laundered funds transferred through
US banks Wachovia Corp. and Bank of America.
(AP, 4/12/06)(SFC, 6/30/10, p.D1)
2006 Oct 3, A Turkish Airlines
plane carrying 113 people from Albania to Istanbul landed in Italy
where a Turkish man surrendered and released all the passengers
unharmed. The Turkish army deserter who hijacked the airliner sought
asylum because he feared persecution in his Muslim homeland after his
conversion to Christianity and wanted Pope Benedict XVI's protection.
(AP, 10/4/06)(AP, 10/3/07)
2006 Oct 29, Libya took delivery
of a Boeing jetliner for the first time in 30 years after the privately
owned Buraq Air airline bought six of the US-made aircraft.
(AFP, 10/28/06)
2006 Nov 15, US Airways Group Inc.
made an $8 billion cash and stock bid for Delta Air Lines Inc., a deal
that would create one of the world's largest carriers. The move came
despite Delta's repeated statements it isn't interested in a merger.
(AP, 11/15/06)
2006 Boeing developed its Large
Cargo Freighter, a converted 747, to handle large cargo for its new 787
Dreamliner. The makeover was performed in Taiwan.
(WSJ, 1/8/07, p.A1)
2007 Feb 15, JetBlue Airways Corp.
tried to calm a maelstrom of criticism, after passengers were left
waiting on planes at a NY airport for as long as 11 hours during a snow
and ice storm.
(AP, 2/15/07)
2007 Feb 15, A fast-thinking pilot
with passengers in cahoots fooled hijacker Mohamed Abderraman, a
32-year-old Mauritanian, by braking hard upon landing in Gran Canaria,
then accelerating to knock the man down. When he fell, flight
attendants threw boiling water in his face, and about 10 people pounced
on him.
(AP, 2/16/07)
2007 Feb 28, European airliner
maker Airbus told unions that it would dispose of six factories and
switch some work from France to Germany under a plan costing some
10,000 jobs.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Feb 28, Indonesia said it is
planning to ban local carriers from operating jetliners more than 10
years old as part of a safety campaign following a string of crashes
and accidents.
(AP, 2/28/07)
2007 Mar 1, India’s government
approved a proposal to merge 4 state-owned air-carriers in order to
make them more competitive.
(Econ, 3/10/07, p.59)
2007 Mar 16, JetBlue canceled 215
flights because of a winter storm on the East Coast. The storm was
blamed for as many as a dozen deaths and forced more than 3,600 flight
cancellations.
(AP, 3/16/07)(WSJ, 3/19/07, p.A1)
2007 Mar 30, Authorities arrested
a man armed with a knife who hijacked a Sudan Airways plane while
flying from Libya to Sudan.
(AP, 3/30/07)
2007 Apr 15, Airlines canceled
over 400 flights in the NYC area as a hard-blowing nor'easter gathered
strength along the East Coast. The storm out of the Great Plains was
already blamed for 5 deaths.
(AP, 4/15/07)(SFC, 4/16/07, p.A4)
2007 Apr 30, Delta Air Lines
emerged from bankruptcy after 19 months in Chapter 11.
(Econ, 5/5/07, p.84)
2007 Jun 9, Boeing and Aeroflot
signed a deal for the Russian carrier to acquire 22 Dreamliner jets
from the American plane maker.
(AP, 6/9/07)
2007 Jun 18, In France Airbus
racked up a series of big orders at the opening of the Paris Air Show.
Airbus announced that it had booked firm orders or letters of intent to
order for 339 aircraft, a record figure, for a value of 45.7 billion
dollars (34.1 billion euros) at catalogue prices.
(AP, 6/18/07)(AFP, 6/19/07)
2007 Jun 19, International Lease
Finance Corp., the world's largest airline leasing company, ordered 63
Boeing jets with a total list price of $8.8 billion.
(AP, 6/19/07)
2007 Jul 9, The EU's top justice
official said EU citizens will be protected by the US Privacy Act under
an anti-terror deal with Washington on the sharing of trans-Atlantic
air passenger data.
(AP, 7/10/07)
2007 Jul 7, In Oregon Kent Couch
(47) in his lawn chair with some snacks and a parachute rose to the sky
under 105 large helium balloons. Nearly 9 hours later the gas station
owner came back to earth in a farmer's field near Union, 193 miles from
home. In September he had got off the ground for six hours.
(AP, 7/10/07)
2007 Aug 1, A financial watchdog
said British Airways has been fined a record 121.5 million pounds (180
million euros, $246 million) after admitting collusion with Virgin
Atlantic over fuel surcharges on tickets. British Airways and Korean
Air (for collusion with Lufthansa) agreed to pay $300 million each in
fines and plead guilty to federal charges that they colluded with other
airlines to set ticket prices.
(AFP, 8/1/07)(SFC, 8/2/07, p.C2)(Econ, 8/4/07, p.48)
2007 Aug 27, Opera Romana
Pellegrinaggi, a Vatican-backed charter airline service, made its
inaugural flight, aiming to carry pilgrims to such Catholic shrines as
Lourdes, Fatima, Santiago de Compostela and the Holy Land.
(AP, 8/27/07)
2007 Aug 28, Paul MacCready
(b.1925), designer of the Gossamer Albatross, died in California. His
bicycle powered plane crossed the English Channel in 1979. He founded
AeroVironment in 1971 to monitor air pollution.
(www.sas.org/maccready.htm)(Econ, 9/8/07, p.88)
2007 Sep 2, Temasek, Singapore’s
state-owned investment company, said it would take a 8.3% stake in
China Eastern Airlines and Singapore Airlines announced a 15.7% stake.
(Econ, 9/29/07,
p.68)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Eastern_Airlines)
2007 Sep 4, Steve Fosset (63),
tycoon turned record seeker, disappeared in Nevada after flying from
the Flying M Ranch, owned by billionaire Baron Hilton. In 2002 Fosset
became the 1st person to fly around the world in a balloon.
(SFC, 9/5/07, p.A8)(SFC, 9/15/07, p.A1)
2007 Sep 8, It was reported that
China has 126 airports, 57 of which can handle private planes. This was
compared to 500 airports in the US that can handle big commercial
airliners, and some 10,000 that handle smaller planes.
(Econ, 9/8/07, p.69)
2007 Sep 26, Russia unveiled its
regional 95-seat Superjet-100, a government-backed effort to
re-energize the country's ailing aviation industry and get into a
market now dominated by Bombardier and Embraer.
(AP, 9/26/07)
2007 Sep 28, Traveler Carol Anne
Gotbaum of New York died in a holding cell at Sky Harbor International
Airport in Phoenix; authorities say Gotbaum accidentally asphyxiated
herself after being chained to a bench.
(AP, 9/28/08)
2007 Oct 3, Tony Ryan (b.1936),
Irish-born aviation entrepreneur and co-founder of Ryanair (1985), died.
(WSJ, 10/6/07,
p.A17)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryanair)
2007 Oct 15,
Airbus finally delivered its first A380 superjumbo jet. Singapore
Airlines took delivery of the double-decker jet, the world's largest
passenger plane, almost two years late.
(AP, 10/15/07)
2007 Oct 25, An Airbus 380, the
world's largest jetliner, made aviation history, completing its first
commercial flight from Singapore to Sydney with 455 passengers, some of
them ensconced in luxury suites and double beds.
(AP, 10/25/07)
2007 Oct 27, Queues of frustrated,
angry passengers built up at main French airports as Air France
cancelled scores of flights on the third day of a strike by cabin staff.
(AP, 10/27/07)
2007 Nov 12, Airbus said it was
building a custom, 380 VIP double-decker jet for Saudi Prince Alwaleed
bin Talal with a price tag of over $320 million.
(AP, 11/12/07)
2007 Nov 27, Cessna said it will
turn over complete production of its new Cessna 162 SkyCatcher to a
Chinese partner. The base price of the plane will be $109,500.
(WSJ, 11/28/07, p.A14)
2007 Dec 13, Lufthansa AG said it
is paying $300 million for a 19% stake in JetBlue Airways.
(SFC, 12/14/07, p.D3)
2007 Dec 21, China's first fully
homegrown commercial aircraft, the 70-seat ARJ21, rolled off the
production line, marking a potential milestone for the country's
aviation program. Its first test flight was set for 2008.
(AP,
12/21/07)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ACAC_ARJ21)
2007 Kathleen M. Barry authored
“Femininity in Flight: A History of Flight Attendants.”
(Econ, 5/5/07, p.105)
2008 Feb 8, In New Zealand a
knife-wielding woman (33), originally from Somalia, tried to hijack a
regional domestic flight, stabbing both pilots and threatening to blow
up the twin-propeller plane before she was subdued.
(AP, 2/8/08)
2008 Feb 14, Boeing and India's
Tata Industries announced an agreement to set up a joint venture
company to handle an initial 500 million dollars of defense-related
aerospace component work in India.
(AFP, 2/14/08)
2008 Feb 24, The first flight by a
commercial airline to be partly powered by biofuels took off from
London on a short trip to Amsterdam billed as heralding a new
eco-friendlier era of airline travel.
(AFP, 2/24/08)
2008 Mar 15, Alitalia, Italy’s
state-owned national airline, accepted a takeover offer worth $217 made
by air France-KLM, a French-Dutch airline group. The Italian government
accepted the offer on March 17.
(Econ, 3/22/08, p.73)
2008 Mar 25, Air travel between
Georgia and Russia resumed, more than 17 months after Moscow suspended
flights because of tension between the ex-Soviet neighbors.
(AP, 3/25/08)
2008 Mar 28, British Airways Plc
cancelled a fifth of flights from its new $8.6 billion terminal at
London's Heathrow airport as chaos from its shambolic opening spilled
into a second day.
(AP, 3/28/08)
2008 Mar 29, British Airways said
that it was canceling more flights to and from London Heathrow
airport's new Terminal 5 for a third day running because of logistical
problems.
{Britain, Aviation}
(AFP, 3/29/08)
2008 Mar 31, Hawaii’s Aloha
Airlines ended passenger service after today due to competition and
rising fuel prices.
(SFC, 3/31/08, p.A1)
2008 Apr 1, In France the
stockmarket watchdog Autorite des Marches Financiers (AMF) filed a
formal complaint against the European Aeronautic Defense and Space
Company, the parent company of Airbus, and more than a dozen current
and former executives. It confirmed evidence of massive insider trading
in shares of EADS in late 2005 and early 2006 in the knowledge that the
A380 airbus program was in deep trouble.
(Econ, 6/21/08, p.80)(http://tinyurl.com/3kd8vh)
2008 Apr 3, ATA Airlines
discontinued all flights and filed for bankruptcy.
(AP, 4/3/08)
2008 Apr 3, Alitalia edged closer
to bankruptcy protection after Air France-KLM abruptly broke off talks
to buy the struggling national airline and Alitalia's chairman of seven
months resigned in frustration.
(AP, 4/3/08)
2008 Apr 5, Skybus Airlines, a
low-cost carrier based in Columbus, Ohio, shut down and filed for
bankruptcy protection, becoming the latest of the nation's airlines to
fall because of rising fuel costs and a slowing economy.
(AP, 4/5/08)(SFC, 4/8/08, p.D3)
2008 Apr 7, The EU opened the way
for air travelers to use mobile phones to talk, text or send e-mails on
planes throughout Europe's airspace.
(AP, 4/7/08)
2008 Apr 9, Oasis Hong Kong
Airlines cancelled all flights and went into liquidation as a result of
high fuel costs.
(SFC, 4/10/08, p.C4)
2008 Apr 10, American Airlines
canceled more than 900 flights to fix faulty wiring in hundreds of
jets, marking the third straight day of mass groundings as company
executives offered profuse apologies and travel vouchers to calm angry
customers.
(AP, 4/10/08)
2008 Apr 14, Delta Air Lines and
Northwest Airlines announced an agreement to a $17.7 billion merger
creating the world’s largest carrier.
(SFC, 4/15/08, p.A1)
2008 Apr 22,
Alitalia flew into the unknown after Air France-KLM withdrew its
takeover offer, leaving Italy's long-struggling flagship airline with
little choice but to contemplate bankruptcy or receivership. The
outgoing center-left government allowed a loan of €300 million to
Alitalia.
(AP, 4/22/08)(Econ, 4/26/08, p.68)
2008 Apr 26, Eos Airlines, a
Business-class carrier launched in 2005, filed for bankruptcy. It
ceased operations the next day.
(SFC, 4/28/08, p.A4)
2008 May 11, China PM Wen Jiabao
launched Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (CACC), in an effort
to challenge the duopoly of Airbus and Boeing.
(Econ, 5/17/08, p.82)
2008 May 14, A Swiss pilot
strapped on a jet-powered wing and leaped from a plane for the first
public demonstration of the homemade device, turning figure eights and
soaring high above the Alps.
(AP, 5/15/08)
2008 May 21, American Airlines
said it will remove 75 of 954 aircraft in its fleet and start charging
some domestic passengers $15 to check a suitcase due to rising fuel
costs. Oil futures closed at a record $133.17.
(SFC, 5/22/08, p.C1)(WSJ, 5/22/08, p.A1)
2008 May 31, President Manuel
Zelaya said that Honduras would create a civilian airport for
commercial jets on a US military airfield, diverting traffic from
Tegucigalpa's notoriously dangerous airport following a deadly crash.
(AP, 6/1/08)
2008 Jun 3, UAL Corp's United
Airlines announced plans to slash jobs and flights, following a similar
move by AMR Corp's American Airlines last month.
(Reuters, 6/5/08)
2008 Jun 5, Continental Airlines
Inc said it would cut 3,000 jobs, or about 6.5 percent of its work
force, and retire 67 older planes as it scales down in the face of
soaring fuel prices.
(Reuters, 6/5/08)
2008 Jun 13, In London,
administrators said a takeover deal to rescue small business-class
airline Silverjet has collapsed. The airline employed 370 pilots and
cabin crew and 50 administrative staff in Luton, where it operated
flights to New York and Dubai.
(AFP, 6/13/08)(http://tinyurl.com/56mjgg)
2008 Jun 18, The US Government
Accountability Office (GAO) upheld Boeing’s protest of a refueling
tanker contract and recommended a new competition.
(SFC, 6/19/08, p.A8)
2008 Jun 21, A Sudanese official
said Sudan is grounding its national carrier Sudan Airways from June 23
for at least a month for breaking civil aviation rules, mainly over
administration. On June 23 the Civil Aviation Authority agreed to a one
month reprieve.
(AP, 6/21/08)(AFP, 6/24/08)
2008 Jun 26, Four international
airlines (Air France-KLM, Cathay Pacific Airways, Martinair Holland and
SAS Cargo Group) agreed to pay $504 million in fines to the US Justice
Dept. to settle charges they conspired to fleece consumers by driving
up cargo shipping prices.
(AP, 6/26/08)
2008 Jul 14, At Britain’s
Farnborough International Airshow Etihad Airways, the national carrier
of the United Arab Emirates, said it had agreed to buy 45 Boeing
passenger jets worth 9.4 billion dollars (5.9 billion euros).
(AFP, 7/14/08)
2008 Jul 26, Brazil's Embraer
(EMBR3.SA), the world's third-biggest commercial jet maker, said it
would invest 148 million euros in two new plants in Portugal -- its
first industrial units in Europe that will make wings and tailpieces
for exports.
(AP, 7/26/08)
2008 Aug 20, International and
domestic flights were disrupted across India as thousands of airport
employees went on strike to protest plans to privatize airports.
(AP, 8/20/08)
2008 Jul 28, The propeller-driven
"Zephyr" aircraft, owned by QinetiQ Group PLC, began a flight over the
Arizona desert and continued for an unofficial record of 83 hours and
37 minutes, more than doubling the official world record set by
Northrop Grumman's "Global Hawk" in 2001. The 66 pound- (30 kilogram-)
plane was launched by hand and flown by autopilot and via satellite.
(AP, 8/24/08)
2008 Aug 26, Sudanese hijackers
commandeered the Boeing 737 jetliner, which was carrying 95 passengers
and crew, soon after it took off from the southern Darfur town of
Nyala, not far from a refugee camp that the Sudanese military attacked
a day earlier.
(AP, 8/27/08)
2008 Aug 27, Two hijackers, who
commandeered a jetliner from Sudan's Darfur region and diverted it to a
remote desert airstrip in southern Libya, surrendered after a 22-hour
standoff.
(AP, 8/27/08)
2008 Sep 19, Alitalia cancelled
flights and regulators said they might soon ground the troubled
flag-carrier as it hurtles toward bankruptcy after the failure of
another rescue plan.
(AP, 9/19/08)
2008 Sep 26, Yves Rossy of
Switzerland leapt from a plane and into the record books, crossing the
English channel in 13 minutes on a homemade jet-propelled wing.
(AP, 9/26/08)
2008 Oct 15, Turkish media say a
hijacker attempted to commandeer a Turkish Airlines plane over Belarus
but he was overpowered by passengers.
(AP, 10/15/08)
2008 Oct 21, EU lawmakers joined
US civil liberty campaigners in criticizing a new scanner that allows
airport security to see through passengers' clothes, calling it a
virtual strip search that should only be used as a last resort.
(AP, 10/21/08)
2008 Oct 30, In Germany the last
flight lifted off from Berlin's Tempelhof Airport, bringing an end to
an era of aviation that spanned World War II, the Cold War and the
rebirth of the German capital.
(AP, 10/30/08)
2008 Oct 31, Airship Ventures
began operating zeppelin flights from Moffett field in Mountain View,
Ca. Passenger tickets were set at $495 per person for one hour and $950
for 2 hours.
(SFC, 10/28/08, p.A1)
2008 Nov 7, European planemaker
Airbus said that Spanish tourism company Grupo Marsans has signed a
firm order for 61 aircraft worth almost $9 billion at list prices.
(AP, 11/7/08)
2008 Nov 14, Nearly half of Air
France's flights were grounded by a pilots' strike expected to last
through the weekend.
(AP, 11/14/08)
2008 Nov 25, In Thailand Bangkok's
main international airport halted all flight operations after
anti-government protesters stormed the departures area.
(AFP, 11/25/08)
2008 Nov 25, Indochina Airlines,
Vietnam’s first privately owned airline, began operations.
(www.india-server.com/news/vietnam-launches-indochina-airlines-4811.html)
2008 Nov 27, Thailand's government
prepared to crack down on protesters occupying the capital's two
airports, but called on the public not to panic as rumors of a coup
swept through the city.
(AP, 11/27/08)
2008 Dec 3, In Thailand the first
commercial flight in a week arrived in Bangkok as anti-government
protesters ended their siege of the country's two main airports,
declaring victory after PM Somchai Wongsawat was ousted by a court
ruling.
(AP, 12/3/08)
2008 Dec 6, Okay Airways, China's
first private airline, began a planned one-month suspension of
passenger service 10 days early after skittish airports insisted on
cash to refuel its planes. The airline suffered from financial and
management woes.
(AP, 12/6/08)
2008 Dec 9, The European Union and
Canada reached a deal to open their aviation markets to each other by
removing restrictions on direct flights and foreign ownership in
airlines.
(AP, 12/9/08)
2008 Dec, Russia’s Finance Leasing
Co. (FLC), a subsidiary of United Aircraft Corp., defaulted on $250
million of bonds, the first default by a state-owned company on foreign
debt since the country’s 1998 financial meltdown.
(WSJ, 3/23/09, p.A1)
2009 Jan 5, Boeing signed a $2.1
billion deal with India for eight P-81 maritime patrol aircraft.
(WSJ, 1/6/09, p.B4)
2009 Jan 9, Lithuania’s FlyLAL
airline, privatized in 2005, announced that SCH Swiss Capital Holdings,
a Switzerland-based firm, has purchased it for $1 million and debt of
about 1 million euros. On Jan 17 FlyLAL airline said it has suspended
its operations after a buyout deal by Swiss investment firm SCH Swiss
Capital Holdings failed.
(AP, 1/9/09)(AP, 1/17/09)
2009 Jan 12, Alitalia's board
accepted Air France-KLM's offer to buy 25 percent of the company and
become its international partner.
(AP, 1/12/09)
2009 Jan 13, Nancy Bird-Walton
(93), Australian aviation pioneer, died from natural causes. She was
the first woman in Australia to operate a commercial aircraft. Sir
Charles Kingsford-Smith, the first man to fly across the mid-Pacific,
taught Watson how to fly in 1933, when she was just 17 years old. Two
years later, she obtained a commercial pilot's license and began taking
paying passengers for joyrides around the country.
(AP, 1/13/09)
2009 Jan 15, A US Airways Airbus
A320 jetliner, piloted by Chesley B. Sullenberger and bound for
Charlotte, NC, landed in the Hudson River after both engines failed
shortly after takeoff from LaGuardia and an encounter with a flock of
geese. All 155 people aboard Flight 1549 survived.
(AP, 1/16/09)(WSJ, 1/16/09, p.A3)
2009 Jan 15, The British
government announced its support for a controversial third runway at
London's chronically overcrowded Heathrow Airport, despite angry
opposition from green groups and locals.
(AP, 1/15/09)
2009 Feb 2, Guyana banned
nighttime flights because of a strike by air traffic controllers. The
strike began the night of Jan 30 over union demands for salary
increases of 5 percent. The government says it cannot grant the pay
hikes because it needs to upgrade airport safety equipment.
(AP, 2/2/09)
2009 Feb 18, Iran’s Deputy Defense
Minister Ahmad Vahidi said in published remarks that Iran has built an
unmanned surveillance aircraft with a range of more than 600 miles,
enough to reach Israel. Iran announced two years ago that it had built
an unmanned aircraft, but Vahidi's comments were the first by a top
official revealing its range.
(AP, 2/18/09)
2009 Feb 8, Sigurdur Helgason
(b.1921), former Icelandic airline CEO (1974-1984), died on the
Caribbean private island of Mustique. He pioneered cheap flights that
carried legions of backpackers between Europe and the United States in
the 1960s and '70s.
(AP, 2/21/09)
2009 Feb 24, The United Arab
Emirates' official news agency said US firms Boeing Co. and Lockheed
Martin Corp. have been awarded almost $3 billion in contracts to supply
transport aircraft for the country's military.
(AP, 2/24/09)
2009 Feb 27, A court ordered the
Japanese government to pay 5.6 billion yen ($57.7 million) to
compensate people whose lives are disrupted by the noise of warplanes
at a US air base on the southern island of Okinawa. The Fukuoka High
Court ruling doubled the 2.8 million yen compensation awarded in 2005
to the people living around Kadena Air Base, and upheld the appeals of
5,540 residents.
(AP, 2/27/09)
2009 Mar 26, In Brazil
engine pieces from a US plane fell from the sky, hitting 22 houses and
a car but sparing passengers and residents on the ground. Arrow Cargo's
station manager in Manaus, Rai Marinho, said the company will pay local
residents for damages to their property.
(AP, 3/26/09)
2009 Apr 20, In Jamaica police and
soldiers stormed an aircraft and captured a hijacking suspect,
identified as Stephen Fray (20). The gunman had forced his way though
airport security and hijacked a Canadian jet near Montego Bay, holding
six crew members hostage for eight hours.
(AP, 4/20/09)
2009 Apr 29, In Cuba a statement
published in state newspapers said that effective midnight, flights
from Cuba to Mexico would be grounded due to swine flu. After that,
airlines can fly presumably empty planes to the island and pickup
Mexico travels. This amended a blanket 48-hour ban on flights between
Mexico and Cuba announced a day earlier.
(AP, 4/29/09)
2009 May 6, Canada and the EU
signed an "open skies" pact under which airlines from the two trading
partners will be able to fly freely between any airport in the
27-country EU and any in Canada.
(Reuters, 5/6/09)
2009 Jun 26, In Switzerland Solar
Impulse, a project run by aviators Bertrand Piccard and Andre
Borschberg, unveiled a prototype solar powered airplane, the HB-SIA.
(AP, 6/26/09)(Econ, 6/13/09, p.83)
2009 Aug 8, Continental Express
Flight 2816, en route with 47 passengers to Minneapolis from Houston,
was stranded overnight at Rochester, Minn., after being forced to land
due to storms. On Nov 24 the Dept. of Transportation levied $175,000 in
fines against Continental, ExpressJet and Mesaba Airlines for keeping
the plane on the tarmac.
(SFC, 11/25/09, p.A6)
2009 Aug 22, The EU published a
list of nearly 4,000 airlines that it says should reduce their impact
on the environment from 2012 or face being banned from European
airports.
(AP, 8/22/09)
2009 Sep 3, In the US Virgin
Islands two ticket agent contractors who worked for Delta Airlines and
an airport employee were arrested after being indicted by a federal
grand jury on charges of conspiracy to smuggle illegal immigrants into
the US.
(AP, 9/5/09)
2009 Sep 9, In Mexico a
Bolivian-born man, clutching a Bible and claiming a divine mission,
hijacked a plane with more than 100 people aboard after takeoff from
Cancun. The incident ended quickly and without bloodshed when police
arrested Jose Flores (44) in Mexico City. Police in Morelia said that
they had seized eight counterfeit police and rescue vehicles including
an intensive care ambulance with official-looking logos and paint jobs.
The vehicles belonged to gang members who planned to use them to
conduct illegal activities.
(Reuters, 9/10/09)(AP, 9/10/09)
2009 Sep 15, In Puerto Rico
several employees of American Airlines were among a group of at least
20 people arrested on suspicion of aiding a smuggling ring that shipped
drugs from Puerto Rico's main airport to the US mainland.
(AP, 9/15/09)
2009 Oct 21, Security guards
thwarted an attempted hijacking on an EgyptAir flight from Istanbul to
Cairo by overpowering a Sudanese man who threatened crew members with a
plastic knife. The man told flight attendants he wanted to "liberate
Jerusalem."
(AP, 10/21/09)
2009 Oct 21, Northwest Airlines
Flight 188 overflew its Minneapolis destination by 150 miles. Air
traffic controllers and pilots tried for more than an hour night to
contact pilot Richard Cole (54) of Salem, Oregon, and the flight's
captain, Timothy B. Cheney (53), of Gig Harbor, Wash., using radio,
cell phone and data messages. The pilots said they had been having a
heated discussion about airline policy. On Oct 27 the FAA revoked the
licenses of the two pilots saying they had been out of radio contact
for 91 minutes.
(AP, 10/24/09)(SFC, 10/28/09, p.A6)
2009 Nov 6, British Airways
revealed a quadrupling of net losses in its first half, and axed an
extra 1,200 jobs in an "essential" cost-reduction program.
(AP, 11/6/09)
2009 Nov 12, British Airways PLC
and Spanish airline Iberia SA confirmed they are holding separate board
meetings about a long-awaited merger, responding to feverish
speculation that has sent the companies' shares soaring.
(AP, 11/12/09)
2009 Nov 13, A Somali man was
arrested by African Union peacekeeping troops before a Daallo Airlines
flight took off from Mogadishu. It was scheduled to travel from
Mogadishu to the northern Somali city of Hargeisa, then to Djibouti and
Dubai. The man was carrying powdered chemicals, liquid and a syringe
that could have caused an explosion. The case bore chilling
similarities to a later Dec 25 terrorist plot to blow up a
Detroit-bound airliner.
(AP, 12/30/09)
2009 Nov 19, US air travelers
scrambled to revise their travel plans after an FAA computer glitch
caused widespread cancellations and delays for the second time in 15
months.
(AP, 11/19/09)
2009 Nov 23, UOP LLC, a Honeywell
company, announced today that its renewable jet fuel process technology
was used to convert second-generation, renewable feedstocks to green
jet fuel for a biofuel demonstration flight by KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.
(http://tinyurl.com/yb877n3)(SFC, 11/24/09, p.A2)
2009 Nov 25, Yves Rossy, a Swiss
adventurer, landed in the Atlantic after trying to soar from Morocco to
Spain on jet-powered wings.
(SFC, 11/27/09, p.A2)
2009 Nov 28, French Transport
Minister Dominique Bussereau said Russia has given the green light for
Air France's A380 superjumbo to overfly Siberia, opening the way for a
projected Paris-Tokyo service. The accord was approved by PM Vladimir
Putin at the end of a two-day visit to France which saw a number of
business deals concluded. Putin's trip also secured a deal for French
investment in a key pipeline project and the struggling Avtovaz car
maker, as well as a promise that France will consider selling Moscow a
huge amphibious assault ship.
(AFP, 11/28/09)
2009 Nov 2, In Mali the burned
debris of a Boeing cargo plane was discovered on Nov. 2 in the Gao
region. It was assumed to have landed on a clandestine landing strip
and either failed to take off again or was destroyed on purpose. Ample
traces of cocaine were found on board.
(AP, 12/3/09)
2009 Dec 11, German officials said
Berlin's new airport will be named after Willy Brandt (1913-1992), the
former West German leader who championed East-West relations and won
the Nobel Peace Prize (1971).
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 11, In Spain the A400M
military transport plane, that has been causing Airbus and European
defense ministers budgetary and logistical headaches, finally took to
the skies for its maiden flight.
(AP, 12/11/09)
2009 Dec 12, In Thailand 5
foreigners were detained and their foreign-registered aircraft
impounded after it landed in the Thai capital with tons of war weaponry
on board that originated in North Korea. The aircraft, an Ilyushin 76
transport from Kazakhstan, was allegedly traveling from North Korea to
Sri Lanka when it asked to land in Bangkok to refuel. According to a
flight plan seen by arms trafficking researchers, the aircraft was
chartered by Hong Kong-based Union Top Management Ltd. to fly oil
industry spare parts from Pyongyang to Tehran, Iran, with several other
stops, including Bangkok, Colombo in Sri Lanka, Azerbaijan and Ukraine.
(AP, 12/12/09)(AP, 12/23/09)
2009 Dec 15, Boeing’s new 787
jetliner made its inaugural flight from Everett’s Paine Field,
beginning an extensive testing program to obtain FAA certification.
(SFC, 12/15/09, p.A12)
2009 Dec 15, British Airways
sought a court injunction to prevent a 12-day strike by cabin crew that
would cause havoc for one million travelers over the Christmas and New
Year's holidays.
(AP, 12/15/09)
2009 Dec 21, The Obama
administration took aim at tarmac horror stories, ordering airlines to
let passengers stuck in stranded airplanes to disembark after three
hours.
(AP, 12/21/09)
2009 Dec 22, Budget airline
EasyJet cancelled about 180 flights due both to the "significant
snowfall" and airport closures across Britain, in a fresh blow to
passengers hoping to travel for the Christmas holidays.
(AFP, 12/22/09)
2009 Dec 22, American Airlines
Flight 331 carrying 154 people skidded across a Jamaican runway in
heavy rain, bouncing across the tarmac and injuring more than 40 people
before it stopped just short of the Caribbean Sea.
(AP, 12/23/09)(SFC, 12/24/09, p.A2)
2009 Dec 25, An attempted bombing
took place as Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam prepared to
land in Detroit just before noon. Law enforcement officials identified
the suspect as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (23), a Nigerian man, who
claimed to be acting on orders from al-Qaida to blow up the airliner.
(AP, 12/26/09)(AFP, 12/29/09)
2009 Dec 30, The Netherlands
announced it will immediately begin using full body scanners for
flights heading to the United States, issuing a report that called the
failed Christmas Day airline bombing a "professional" terror attack.
(AP, 12/30/09)
2009 Dec 30, A Nigerian official
says the nation will purchase 3-D, full body scanners after Umar Farouk
Abdulmutallab passed through Nigeria's biggest airport before trying to
bring down a US-bound flight on Christmas Day.
(AP, 12/30/09)
2010 Jan 19, Japan Airlines filed
for one of the country's largest bankruptcies ever, entering a
restructuring that will shrink Asia's top carrier and its presence
around the world.
(AP, 1/19/10)
2010 Feb 8, Boeing Co.’s 250-foot
747-8 freighter, the biggest plane it has ever built, successfully
completed its first flight from Paine Field, in Everett, Wash.
(SFC, 2/9/10, p.A4)
2010 Feb 15, British Airways said
it would use low-carbon fuel to power part of its fleet from 2014 once
Europe's first sustainable jet-fuel plant was built by US biofuels
specialist Solena Group. A plant to be built in London will convert
500,000 tons of waste into 16 million gallons of green jet fuel
annually.
(AFP, 2/15/10)
2010 Feb 19, Two Muslim women were
stopped from boarding a flight at Manchester airport from Britain
to Pakistan for refusing to go through new body scanners, citing
religious and medical reasons.
(AFP, 3/4/10)
2010 Feb 22, German airline
Lufthansa went to court in a bid to halt a strike by some 4,000 pilots
that disrupted more than one third of its flights. Later in the day
Lufthansa pilots agreed to suspend for two weeks a strike that grounded
about 900 flights, just as rival British Airways' cabin crew voted to
join the fray to protest harsh cost cuts.
(AP, 2/22/10)(Reuters, 2/22/10)
2010 Feb 26, In France a strike by
air traffic controllers disrupted flight for a 4th day and some Air
France pilots walked off the job to protest cost cutting measures.
(SFC, 2/27/10, p.A2)
2010 Mar 19, In London last-ditch
talks aimed at preventing a strike by some 12,000 British Airways (BA)
cabin crew collapsed, leaving thousands of passengers facing chaos
within hours.
(AFP, 3/19/10)
2010 Mar 20, British Airways
canceled more than 1,000 flights after its cabin crew launched a
three-day strike, wreaking havoc on the plans of tens of thousands of
passengers just before the busy spring holiday season. .
(AP, 3/20/10)
2010 Mar 21, British Airways cabin
crews walked off the job for a second day, upsetting travel plans for
scores of customers, but the airline said its contingency plans were
working well and more planes were taking off than expected.
(AP, 3/21/10)
2010 Mar 22, British Airways cabin
crew held a 3rd day of strike action, prolonging travel misery for
thousands. A business group warned the action threatens Britain's
global reputation.
(AP, 3/22/10)
2010 Mar 27, British Airways cabin
crew launched a four-day strike, the second wave of action in a week as
part of a bitter, long-running dispute over pay and conditions.
(AFP, 3/27/10)
2010 Mar 28, British Airways cabin
crew entered the second day of a four-day strike, bringing further
travel disruption with no end in sight for a dispute that has become
increasingly political.
(AFP, 3/28/10)
2010 Apr 7, In Switzerland the
Solar Impulse aircraft, a pioneering Swiss bid to fly around the world
on solar energy, successfully completed its first test flight.
(AFP, 4/7/10)
2010 Apr 10, French explorer
Jean-Louis Etienne (63) made the first Arctic crossing by balloon,
landing in the tundra of eastern Siberia five days after taking off in
Norway.
(AP, 4/10/10)
2010 Apr 15, British airport
operator BAA Ltd. said all flights at London's Heathrow Airport have
been suspended for the rest of the day, causing travel chaos as ash
clouds from Iceland's spewing volcano halted air traffic across Europe.
(AP, 4/15/10)
2010 Apr 16, Volcanic ash
blanketed parts of rural Iceland and left a widening arc of grounded
aircraft across Europe, as thousands of planes stayed on the tarmac to
avoid the hazardous cloud. Travel chaos engulfed major European cities
and the UN warned of possible health risks from falling ash.
(AP, 4/16/10)
2010 Apr 17, A lingering volcanic
ash plume forced extended no-fly restrictions over much of Europe, as
Icelandic scientists warned that volcanic activity had increased and
showed no sign of abating, a portent of more travel chaos to come.
Nearly 17,000 flights to and from Europe were cancelled out of about
22,000 on a normal day.
(AP, 4/17/10)(Econ, 4/24/10, p.63)
2010 Apr 19, The chief of British
Airways said test flights have proven that the blanket restrictions EU
governments have imposed on flights because of volcanic ash are
unnecessary. The airline industry said it has lost at least $1 billion
due to five days of closed airports. A senior Western diplomat says
several NATO F-16 fighters suffered engine damage after flying through
the volcanic ash cloud covering large parts of Europe.
(AP, 4/19/10)
2010 Apr 20, Airplanes gradually
took to the skies after five days of being grounded by a volcanic ash
cloud that has devastated European travel. Only limited flights were
allowed to resume at some European airports and UK authorities said
London airports would remained closed for at least another day due to
new danger from the invisible ash cloud.
(AP, 4/20/10)
2010 Apr 22, European airports
sent thousands of planes into the sky after a week of unprecedented
disruptions, with airlines piling on more flights and bigger planes to
try to get as many people home as possible.
(AP, 4/22/10)
2010 Apr 25, Kifah Hassan, chief
executive of Iraqi Airways, had his passport seized and the plane he
arrived on was impounded at Gatwick Airport in a long-running legal
dispute with Kuwait Airways. The dispute dated back to Saddam Hussein's
invasion of Kuwait in 1990, when, according to the oil-rich
emirate, 10 of its planes and aircraft parts were plundered after its
airport was seized.
(AFP, 4/30/10)
2010 May 2, United Airlines said
it has agreed to buy Continental in a $3 billion-plus deal that would
create the world's largest carrier with a commanding position in
several top US cities.
(AP, 5/3/10)(SFC, 5/3/10, p.D1)
2010 May 4, Iceland's volcanic ash
renewed its threat to European air space, forcing Ireland to shut
services temporarily for the first time in 12 days. Ireland and Britain
lifted flight restrictions after temporarily closing airspace due to
the return of ash.
(AP, 5/4/10)(AFP, 5/4/10)
2010 May 5, Britain and Ireland
grounded flights again after a fresh cloud of ash swept in from the
Icelandic volcano which sparked unprecedented air travel chaos in
Europe last month.
(AFP, 5/5/10)
2010 May 7, It was reported that
JetBlue has formed a partnership with South African Airways that will
allow travelers to fly on both airlines with a single ticket. Starting
May 12 JetBlue customers will be able to travel to 40 international
cities served by South African Airways.
(AP, 5/7/10)
2010 May 8, Hundreds of flights
between Europe and North America were either delayed or canceled due to
the spreading cloud of volcanic ash stretching across much of the
northern Atlantic. Spain shut 19 northern airports including Barcelona
because of the cloud of ash.
(AP, 5/8/10)(Reuters, 5/8/10)
2010 May 9, A plume of volcanic
ash snaked its way through southern France, Switzerland, Italy and
Germany, shutting down airports and disrupting flights across Europe.
(AP, 5/9/10)
2010 May 11, Volcanic ash from
Iceland wound its way down to North Africa and curled over to Turkey,
forcing authorities to shut down Casablanca airport in Morocco as well
as airports in Spain and airspace over Turkey.
(AP, 5/11/10)
2010 May 11, Mohamed Ibrahim, an
Egyptian-American university botany professor teaching in the United
States, was arrested at Cairo airport after arriving on a direct flight
from New York carrying two pistols, 250 bullets, two swords and 11
knives in his luggage.
(Reuters, 5/12/10)
2010 May 16, Aviation officials
closed airports in northern England, Scotland and Northern Ireland due
to a drifting, dense cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland.
(AP, 5/16/10)
2010 May 24, British Airways cabin
crew started a five-day strike, throwing travel plans for thousands of
passengers into disarray after last-ditch efforts to avert the action
collapsed.
(AP, 5/24/10)
2010 May 26, Iraq's government
dissolved state-owned Iraqi Airways over a decades-old financial
dispute dating back to Saddam Hussein's invasion of his oil-rich
neighbor Kuwait. A lawyer for Kuwait Airways called the Iraqi
government's strategy a "cynical tactic" and said it will not end the
dispute because Kuwait will still hold the government accountable for
the debt.
(AP, 5/26/10)
2010 May 27, Authorities closed
Guatemala's international airport after the nearby Pacaya volcano
showered as much as 3 inches (8 centimeters) of ash over parts of the
city. A television reporter was killed by a shower of burning rocks
when he got too close to the volcano, about 15 miles (25 km) south of
Guatemala City.
(AP, 5/28/10)(AP, 5/29/10)
2010 May 28, Jonathan Trappe (36)
of Raleigh, North Carolina, crossed the English Channel carried by a
bundle of helium balloons, ending a quiet and serene flight by touching
down in a French cabbage patch.
(AP, 5/28/10)
2010 May 30, British Airways cabin
crew started a fresh five-day strike with little sign of a breakthrough
in the long-running dispute between their union and the airline.
(AFP, 5/30/10)
2010 Jun 14, An Iranian airport
official said 71 Iranian women "improperly" dressed were prevented from
boarding flights in recent months, as a police crackdown on the
behavior of young people intensified.
(AFP, 6/14/10)
2010 Jul 6, The EU banned most of
Iran Air's jets from flying to Europe because of safety concerns,
emphasizing that the move was not related to UN sanctions against Iran
over its nuclear program.
(AP, 7/6/10)
2010 Jul 8, In Switzerland an
experimental solar-powered plane completed its first 24-hour test
flight successfully, proving that the aircraft can collect enough
energy from the sun during the day to stay aloft all night.
(AP, 7/8/10)
2010 Jul 14, British Airways and
Iberia won the EU's regulatory approval to merge and to team up with
American Airlines to share more of their lucrative trans-Atlantic
routes.
(AP, 7/14/10)
2010 Jul 14, An Air India plane
carrying more than 200 passengers from New York became the first
commercial flight to land at New Delhi's new Terminal 3, part of a
$2.7-billion airport upgrade.
(AFP, 7/14/10)(Econ, 7/10/10, p.72)
2010 Jul 18, In England plane
manufacturers, airlines, government ministers and military top brass
gathered for the Farnborough International Airshow amid hopes that the
two-year downturn in the aviation and defense industry is nearing a
bottom.
(AP, 7/18/10)
2010 Jul 19, In England Boeing Co.
and Airbus announced new orders worth almost $13 billion at the start
of the Farnborough International Airshow, raising hopes that the
aviation industry is on the way back up after a dire two-year slump.
(AP, 7/19/10)
2010 Jul 19, David Warren
(b.1925), an Australian scientist who invented the "black box" flight
data recorder, died. He designed and constructed a black box prototype
in 1956, but it took several years before officials understood just how
valuable the device could be and began installing them in commercial
airlines worldwide. In 2002, Warren was awarded the Order of Australia,
among the nation's highest civilian honors, for his work.
(AP, 7/20/10)
2010 Aug 2, Compania Mexicana de
Aviacion filed for bankruptcy.
(Econ, 8/14/10, p.53)
2010 Aug 21, A consortium of
Mexican investors said they have acquired 95 percent of Mexicana de
Aviacion airline, which earlier this month filed for bankruptcy
protection. The Tenedora K group was formed "to capitalize" and "save"
Nuevo Grupo Aeronautico, the holding company that controls Mexicana de
Aviacion and two domestic airlines, Mexicana Click and Mexicana Link.
(AFP, 8/22/10)
2010 Aug 23, Officials said the
United States has granted Nigerian airlines permission for direct US
flights.
(AFP, 8/24/10)
2010 Aug 23, Saudi low-cost
private airline Sama, launched in 2007 to serve Gulf and other Arab
states, said it is to suspend services from Aug 24 due to financial
problems.
(AP, 8/23/10)
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Subject = Aviation
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