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The Aviation Portal

A Boeing 747 in 1978 operated by Pan Am

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

Aviation began in the 18th century with the development of the hot air balloon, an apparatus capable of atmospheric displacement through buoyancy. Some of the most significant advancements in aviation technology came with the controlled gliding flying of Otto Lilienthal in 1896; then a large step in significance came with the construction of the first powered airplane by the Wright brothers in the early 1900s. Since that time, aviation has been technologically revolutionized by the introduction of the jet which permitted a major form of transport throughout the world. (Full article...)

Selected article

Computer-generated image of Flight 1907 and N600XL about to collide. The Legacy's left winglet sliced off nearly half of the Boeing's left wing.
Computer-generated image of Flight 1907 and N600XL about to collide. The Legacy's left winglet sliced off nearly half of the Boeing's left wing.
Gol Transportes Aéreos Flight 1907 was a Boeing 737-8EH, registration PR-GTD, on a scheduled passenger flight from Manaus, Brazil, to Rio de Janeiro. On 29 September 2006, just before 17:00 BRT, it collided in midair with an Embraer Legacy business jet over the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso. All 154 passengers and crew aboard the Boeing 737 died when the aircraft broke up in midair and crashed into an area of dense rainforest, while the Embraer Legacy, despite sustaining serious damage to its left wing and tail, landed safely with its seven occupants uninjured. The accident, which triggered a crisis in Brazilian civil aviation, was the deadliest in that country's aviation history at the time, surpassing VASP Flight 168, which crashed in 1982 with 137 fatalities near Fortaleza. It was also the deadliest aviation accident involving a Boeing 737 aircraft at that time. It was subsequently surpassed by Air India Express Flight 812, which crashed at Mangalore, India, on 22 May 2010 with 158 fatalities. The accident was investigated by both the Brazilian Air Force's Aeronautical Accidents Investigation and Prevention Center and the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), with a final report issued on 10 December 2008. CENIPA concluded that the accident was caused by errors committed both by air traffic controllers and by the American pilots, while the NTSB determined that all pilots acted properly and were placed on a collision course by a variety of "individual and institutional" air traffic control errors. (Full article...)

Selected image

An overlay diagram showing four of the largest wide-body aircraft ever built, the Hughes H-4 Hercules (the "Spruce Goose", aircraft with the greatest wingspan), the Antonov An-225 Mriya (the largest freight aircraft), the Boeing 747-8 Intercontinental (soon to be the largest version of the Jumbojet), and the Airbus A380-800 (the largest passenger aircraft).

Did you know

...that among the earliest accounts of the use of a man-lifting kite is in the story of Ishikawa Goemon's robbery from Nagoya Castle? ...that the Blohm und Voss Bv 144 was an attempt by Nazi Germany to develop an advanced commercial airliner for post-war service? ...that the Lockheed NF-104A (pictured), equipped with a reaction control system as well as a rocket engine to supplement a jet engine, was a low-cost training vehicle for American astronauts in the 1960s?

More Did you know facts

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

In the news

Wikinews Aviation portal
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Selected biography

Benjamin Delahauf Foulois (1879-1967) was an early aviation pioneer who rose to become a chief of the U.S. Army Air Corps. The son of a French immigrant, he was born and raised in Connecticut. He enlisted in the Army at age 18 to serve in the Spanish–American War. After just a few month he was separated because of disease he had picked up in Puerto Rico. He re-enlisted in 1899 and was sent to the Philippines where he received a commission as a Second Lieutenant. Foulois believed that the new airplane would replace the cavalry for reconnaissance and in 1908 transferred into the Signal Corps.

Foulois conducted the acceptance test for the Army's first aircraft, a Wright Model A, in 1909. He participated in the Mexican Expedition from 1916–17 and was part of the American Expeditionary Force in France during World War I where he was responsible for the logistics and maintenance of the U.S. air fleet. During World War I he and Billy Mitchell began a long and hostile relationship over the direction of military aviation and the best method to get there. After the war he served as a military attaché to Germany where he gathered a great deal of intelligence on German aviation. He later went on to command the 1st Aero Squadron and ultimately commanded the Air Corps.

He retired in 1935 as part of the fallout from the Air Mail scandal. Foulois continued to advocate for a strong air service in retirement. In 1959, at the invitation of the Chief of Staff of the Air Force, Foulois began touring Air Force bases advocating national security. He died of a heart attack on 25 April 1967 and is buried in his home town of Washington, Connecticut.

Selected Aircraft

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

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

October 3

  • 2009 – A Fuerza Aérea Boliviano Aérospatiale Aérospatiale SA 315B Lama Helicopter (FAB-730) from the Escuadrón 511 crashes into a building wall on the Pampa near the city of Cochabamba, Bolivia leaving 4 crew dead, 1 crew member injured and 1 civilian on the ground injured.
  • 2008 – Deceased: Edsel Dunford, 73, American aerospace engineer, cancer.
  • 2006 – Hakan Ekinci hijacks Turkish Airlines Flight 1476, a Boeing 737-400, over Greece, demanding to be flown to Rome, Italy, to speak to Pope Benedict XVI. Greek and Italian F-16 Fighting Falcons escort the plane to a landing in Brindisi, Italy, where Ekinci is arrested. No one is injured in the incident.
  • 2002 – nited States Navy Grumman F-14A Tomcat, BuNo 162594, coded AD 136, of VF-101, suffers dual compressor stalls, both engines shut down, during routine training flight, crashing in the Gulf of Mexico on mission out of NAS Key West, Florida. Pilot and instructor eject safely at 5,000 feet (1,500 m) and are rescued with only minor injuries by a Sikorsky UH-3 Sea King helicopter. On 5 May 2006, one of this Tomcat's tailfins is discovered on isolated beach W of Cork, Ireland, having floated 4,900 miles (7,900 km.) across the Atlantic. This was the sixteenth and last Tomcat lost by VF-101 during 30 years of operation.
  • 1985 – Launch: Space Shuttle Atlantis STS-51-J at 15:15:30 UTC. Mission highlights: Second classified DoD mission; DSCS satellite deployment; first flight of Atlantis.
  • 1965 – The final elements of the U. S. Army’s 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) to arrive in Vietnam reach its base at An Khe, South Vietnam, bringing the division to full strength there. The division will be the first to place the CH-47 Chinook helicopter in combat; the Chinook’s ability to carry artillery quickly across rough terrain will revolutionize ground warfare.
  • 1963 – The DH 106 Comet aircraft were retired from RCAF service.
  • 1962 – Project Mercury – Sigma 7 launched from Cape Canaveral, with Astronaut Wally Schirra aboard for a six-orbit, nine-hour flight.
  • 1959 – Five ex-RCAF T-33 s were handed over to Athens in Greece.
  • 1953 – Flying a Douglas XF4D-1, U. S. Navy Lieutenant Commander James F. Verdin sets a world airpseed record over a 3 km (1.9 mi) course of 752.944 mph (1,211.487 km/hr). It is the first time that a carrier-capable combat aircraft in its normal configuration sets a world speed record.
  • 1951 – HS-1 is commissioned, the US Navy's first ASW helicopter squadron
  • 1950 – A U. S. Navy HO3 S-1 helicopter from the light cruiser USS Worcester (CL-144) is assigned to assist minesweepers clearing the harbor at Wonsan, Korea. It is one of the first efforts to use helicopters to assist in naval minesweeping.
  • 1949 – The first (of only two) prototypes of the Kellett XR-10 helicopter, 45-22793, crashes due to a control system failure, killing Kellett's chief test pilot, Dave Driskill. The project was abandoned shortly thereafter.
  • 1945 – Captured Focke-Achgelis Fa 223 V14, which on 6 September 1945 became the first helicopter to fly across the English Channel when it was moved from Cherbourg to RAF Beaulieu, crashes on third test flight at RAF Beaulieu, when a driveshaft failed. The accident was thought to be due to a failure to correctly tension the steel cables which secured the engine, despite warnings from Luftwaffe helicopter pilot Helmut Gerstenhauer.
  • 1942 – The first A4 rocket, later dubbed the V-2 flies from Peenemünde, covering 190 km (119 miles) in 296 seconds at five times the speed of sound, reaching an altitude of 84.5 km (53 miles).
  • 1941 – The first prototype Heinkel He 177A Greif, V1, CB+RP, is destroyed on landing.
  • 1935 – Italy invades Ethiopia from its colony in Eritrea, beginning the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. The Italian expeditionary force has 150 aircraft – Including Savoia-Marchetti SM.81, Caproni Ca.113, and Caproni Ca.133 bombers, Savoia-Marchetti S.55 flying boats, and IMAM R.37bis strategic reconnaissance planes – while the serviceable portion of the Imperial Ethiopian Air Force consists only of three small, obsolete biplanes.
  • 1931 – Brazil reestablishes Brazilian Navy control over naval aviation, creating a naval aviation corps which takes over the control of naval aircraft from the general staff.
  • 1925 – (3 or 30) The Royal Navy cruiser Vindictive launches a Fairey IIID floatplane by catapult. It is the first catapult launch of a standard British naval aircraft from a ship at sea.
  • 1910 – The first mid-air collision takes place near Milan. Both pilots, Bertram Dickson and Rene Thomas, survive, but Bertram is badly injured.
  • 1908 – George P. Dicken of the New York Herald becomes the first newspaper reporter to fly in an airplane when he rides as a passenger with Wilbur Wright at Camp d’Auvours.
  • 1901 – Wilhelm Kress trials his Drachenflieger twin-hulled tandem triplane seaplane, the first powered marine aircraft, in Austria-Hungary. It begins to become airborne when Kress slows and tries to turn to avoid an obstruction, capsizing the aircraft.
  • 1900 – Probably on this date, Wilbur Wright makes the Wright brothers’ first glider flight at Kitty Hawk. During their tests, they will fly the 1900 glider both as a glider and as a kite under various wind conditions.
  • 1803 – 3-4 – Frenchman André-Jaques Garnerin covered a distance of 395 km from Paris to Clausen with his Montgolfière.
  • 1785 – Jean-Pierre Blanchard makes the first manned balloon ascent in Germany.

References

  1. ^ Crash: Associated E120 at Lagos on Oct 3rd 2013, lost height after takeoff UPDATE The Aviation Herald. Retrieved 12 October 2013.
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