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Portal:Aviation

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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

BAE Systems' offices in Farnborough, UK
BAE Systems' offices in Farnborough, UK
BAE Systems is a British defence and aerospace company headquartered in London, UK, which has worldwide interests, particularly in North America through its subsidiary BAE Systems Inc. BAE is the world's seventh-largest defence contractor and the largest in Europe. BAE was formed on 30 November 1999 by the £7.7 billion merger of two British companies: Marconi Electronic Systems, the defence electronics and naval shipbuilding subsidiary of the General Electric Company plc (GEC) and aircraft, munitions and naval systems manufacturer British Aerospace (BAe). It has increasingly disengaged from its businesses in continental Europe in favour of investing in the United States. Since its formation it has sold its shares of Airbus, EADS Astrium, AMS and Atlas Elektronik. BAE Systems is involved in several major defence projects, including the F-35 Lightning II, the Eurofighter Typhoon and the Royal Navy Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers. The company has been the subject of criticism, both general opposition to the arms trade and also specific allegations of unethical and corrupt practices, including the Al-Yamama contracts with Saudi Arabia that have earned BAE and its predecessor £43 billion in twenty years. (Full article...)

Selected image

Credit: User:Anynobody
Sequence of events leading to the collision between X - PSA 182 and ♦ - Cessna 172

Did you know

...in 1931 Amelia Earhart flew a Pitcairn PCA-2 autogyro to a then world altitude record of 18,415 feet (5613 m)? ...that the Tenerife disaster remained the deadliest aircraft incident in history until the September 11, 2001 attacks and neither plane was in flight when the accident occurred. ... that Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger, the captain of US Airways Flight 1549, also runs an aviation safety consultant company and has worked as an accident investigator for the USAF, NTSB, and FAA?

More Did you know facts

General images - load new batch

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

In the news

Wikinews Aviation portal
Read and edit Wikinews

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

Selected biography

Billy Mitchell (1879–1936) was an early aviation pioneer who rose to become a chief of the U.S. Army Air Service. Mitchell was born in Nice, France and raised on his family estate near Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He attended George Washington University before enlisting in the Army at age 18 during the Spanish–American War. Due to his family connection he quickly received a commission Signal Corps where he had the opportunity to witness a flight demonstration by the Wright brothers in 1908. In 1916 he took private flight lessons and was transferred to the Aeronautical Division.

Mitchell deployed to France in 1917 when the United States entered World War I. While there he was promoted to brigadier general and placed in command American combat air units in France. After the war Mitchell was appointed the deputy director of the Air Service became a passionate advocate of air power. In 1921 he set up a demonstration to show the capability of airpower against naval vessels. During the course of the demonstrations aircraft successfully sank a captured German destroyer, the light crusier Frankfurt, and the battleship Ostfriesland.

Mitchell regularly sparred with his superiors over the role of airpower in the military. In 1925 he was reverted to his permanent rank of colonel and was transferred to San Antonio, Texas. Later that year, after a series of aviation accidents he accused Army and Navy leadership of incompetence and "almost treasonable administration of the national defense." In response he was court-martialed for insubordination, found guilty, and sentenced to a five-year suspension from active duty. Mitchell resigned on 1 February 1926 in lieu of serving the sentence. He continued to advocate airpower as a civilian until his death in 1936. In 1942 President Franklin Roosevelt posthumously promoted Mitchell to major general in recognition of his contributions to air power.

Selected Aircraft

An ERJ-145 of BA CitiExpress (now BA Connect) takes off from Bristol Airport (UK)
An ERJ-145 of BA CitiExpress (now BA Connect) takes off from Bristol Airport (UK)

The Embraer ERJ-145 is a regional jet produced by Embraer, a Brazilian aerospace company. The ERJ 145 is the largest of a family of airliners, which also includes the ERJ 135, ERJ 140, and Legacy. All aircraft in the series are powered by two turbofan engines. It is one of the most popular regional jet families in the world with primary competition coming from the Canadair Regional Jet.

The first flight of the ERJ 145 was on August 11, 1995, with the first delivery in December 1996 to ExpressJet Airlines (then the regional division of Continental Airlines). ExpressJet is the largest operator of the ERJ 145, with 270 of the nearly 1000 ERJ 145s in service. The second largest operator is American Eagle, with 206 ERJ 145 aircraft. Chautauqua Airlines also operates 95 ERJ 145s through its alliances with American Connection, Delta Connection, US Airways Express and United Express. By some accounts, the ERJ 145 has a cost of ownership of about $2,500,000 per year.

  • Span: 20.04 m (65 ft 9 in)
  • Length: 29.9 m (98 ft 0 in)
  • Height: 6.76 m (22 ft 2 in)
  • Engines: 2× Rolls-Royce AE 3007A turbofans, 33.0 kN (7,420 lbf) thrust each
  • Cruising Speed: 834 km/h (518 mph, Mach 0.78)
  • First Flight: August 11, 1995
  • Number built: ≈1000

Today in Aviation

November 10

  • 2009 – Kingfisher Airlines Flight 4124, operated by ATR 72-212 A VT-KAC skidded off the runway after landing at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport. The aircraft suffered substantial damage but all 46 passengers and crew escaped unharmed.
  • 2008 – Ryanair Flight 4102 was a flight operated by a Boeing 737-8AS, registered EI-DYG, from Frankfurt-Hahn Airport, Germany, to Rome Ciampino Airport, Italy, that, on 10 November 2008 suffered multiple bird strikes. Of the 172 people on board, two crew and eight passengers were transported to hospital and received treatment for minor injuries.
  • 2005 – The Boeing 777-200LR establishes a new world record for nonstop distance by a commercial airplane, flying 11,664 nautical miles in 22 hours and 42 min from Hong Kong to London.
  • 2003 – The final flight of British Airways Concorde G-BOAD is flown from London Heathrow (LHR) to New York’s JFK, to deliver the aircraft to the Intrepid Sea-Air-Space Museum. It was JFK’s very last Concorde movement.
  • 1982 – An Air Combat Manoeuvring Range was opened at Cold Lake. It was the first ACMR built for non-US forces.
  • 1970 – The first of two Russian, unmanned lunar rovers, Lunokhod 1, was launched. As mission Luna 17, the craft was the first remote-controlled robot to land on another celestial body, sending back images and data to Russia until the following September.
  • 1963 – SAC Boeing WB-47E Stratojet, 51-2420, built as B-47E-60-BW and modified to weather reconnaissance variant, making emergency landing at Lajes Air Base, Azores, skids into parking ramp, strikes Boeing Boeing C-97C Stratofreighter, 50-0690, loses port inner engine nacelle (numbers 2 and 3), starboard outer nacelle (number 6) and starboard wingtip. Fire damages port inner wing above lost nacelle. Crew survives.
  • 1959 – The combination of a blizzard and a blocked runway at Malmstrom AFB, Great Falls, Montana lead to the loss of three Northrop F-89 Scorpion aircraft. During a blizzard the runway was unusable due to a Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star which had sheared it's landing gear on touch down. The Scorpions and an undisclosed number of other aircraft were returning to the base low on fuel and in near zero visibility. Four were lost in two of the crashed planes while the two man crew of the third parachuted to safety. No one was injured in the T-33 incident.
  • 1958 – A TCA Vickers Viscount parked at Idlewild Airport, New York while awaiting its passengers was destroyed by fire after it was struck by a Lockheed 1049D Super Constellation of Seaboard & Western Airlines which had crashed while taking off. The two crew members on board survived the accident.
  • 1950 – AA USAF Boeing B-50 Superfortress of the 43d Bomb Wing on a routine weapons ferrying flight between Goose Bay, Labrador and its home base at Davis-Monthan AFB, Arizona, loses two of four engines. To maintain altitude it jettisons empty Mark 4 nuclear bomb casing just before 1600 hrs. at 10,500 feet (3,200 m) above the St. Lawrence River near the town of St. Alexandre-de-Kamouraska, about 90 miles (140 km) northeast of Quebec, Canada. HE in the casing observed detonating upon impact in the middle of the twelve-mile (19 km)-wide river, blast felt for 25 miles (40 km). Official Air Force explanation at the time is that the Superfortress released three conventional 500-pound HE bombs.
  • 1949 – First flight of the Sikorsky H-19, an improved version of HRP helicopter which also will serve as H-21 Shawnee and H-21 Workhorse.
  • 1943 – Boeing B-17G Flying Fortress 42-37831 suffered a hydraulics and brakes failure at RAF Snetterton Heath and was written off.
  • 1942 – USS Chenango (CVE-28) flies off 75 U. S. Army Air Forces P-40 Warhawk fighters, which establish a base at Port Lyautey, French Morocco. SBD Dauntless dive bombers from USS Ranger damage the French battleship Jean Bart in Casablanca harbor.
  • 1941 – First George Cross was awarded posthumously to LAC KM Gravel for his attempted rescue of his pilot from burning wreckage of a DH 82 C Tiger Moth at Calgary, Alberta.
  • 1936 – U.S. Navy Aviation Cadet William H. Jones, on approach to USS Ranger in a Grumman F3F-1, accidentally flies into the foremast of plane guard destroyer. Plane and body sink in 4,600 feet of water.
  • 1933 – Ronald Evans (Captain, USN Ret.), American astronaut was born (d. 1990). Evans was the command module pilot of Apollo 17, the last scheduled manned mission to the moon for the United States. As of 2007, he holds the record of more time in lunar orbit than anyone else in the world. Evans flew F-8 Crusader aircraft from the carrier USS Ticonderoga during a period of seven months in Vietnam combat operation. The total flight time accrued during his career was 5,100 hours, including 4,600 hours in jet aircraft.
  • 1932 – British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin states in a speech that “The bomber will always get through”.
  • 1930 – First airline flight from New York to Panama.
  • 1915 – Theodore Macauly of Toronto was the first to pilot a twin-engined flying boat in Canada.
  • 1907 – Louis Bleriot introduces what will become the modern configuration of the airplane. His Blériot VII has an enclosed or covered fuselage (body), a single set of wings (monoplane), a tail unit, and a propeller in front of the engine.
  • 1907 – Henry Farman becomes the first European to be airborne in a powered heavier-than-air machine for longer than Wilbur Wright‘s 59 s. on 17 December 1903 when he flies for 1 min. 14 s. He covers a distance of 1030 m (3,379 ft).
  • 1904 – Wilbur Wright flies the Wright Flyer II a distance of 3 miles near Dayton, Ohio, the first flight of longer than five minutes.

References

  1. ^ "Bodies of IAF pilot and navigator found after F-16I crash in Negev" haaretz.com. Retrieved: 10 November 2010.
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