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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 aircraft 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

Mirabel Satellite photo

Montréal-Mirabel International Airport is a large airport located in Mirabel, Quebec, near Montreal and was opened 4 October 1975. The airport serves mainly cargo flights, and is a manufacturing base of Bombardier Aerospace, where final assembly of regional jets (CRJ700 and CRJ900) aircraft is conducted. It is part of the National Airports System. It is the second largest airport in the world in terms of area, covering more land area than the five New York City boroughs.

The airport's location and lack of transport links, as well as Montreal's economic decline relative to Toronto, made it unpopular with airlines. Eventually relegated to the simple role of a cargo airport, Mirabel became an embarrassment widely regarded in Canada as being a boondoggle, or a "white elephant," and one of the best examples of a failed megaproject. (Full article...)

More selected articles

Selected image

Jet engine

Diagram: Jeff Dahl

A diagram of a typical turbojet engine. Air is compressed as it enters the engine, and is mixed with fuel that burns in the combustion section. Released through the exhaust, the resulting hot gases provide forward thrust and turn the turbines that drive the fan blades of the compressor.

Did you know

...that in 1943 British Overseas Airways Corporation Flight 777 was shot down by German Junkers Ju 88s, killing actor Leslie Howard and leading to speculation that it was an attempt to assassinate Winston Churchill?

• ...that the Aichi D1A (pictured) was a carrier-borne dive bomber primarily used by the Imperial Japanese Navy during the Second Sino-Japanese War?

... that Samuel Frederick Henry Thompson, a British flying ace of World War I, scored 30 kills in five months of service and won both the DFC and MC?

General images -

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

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  One of Leonardo's sketches (from History of aviation)
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  D.H. Comet, the world's first jet airliner. As in this picture, it also saw RAF service (from History of aviation)
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  Maxim's flying machine (from History of aviation)
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  First female combat pilot, Sabiha Gökçen, reviews her Breguet 19 (from History of aviation)
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  Félix du Temple's 1874 Monoplane (from History of aviation)
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  The Biot-Massia glider, restored and on display in the Musee de l'Air (from History of aviation)
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  Santos-Dumont's "Number 6" rounding the Eiffel Tower in the process of winning the Deutsch de la Meurthe Prize, October 1901 (from History of aviation)
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  First failure of Langley's manned Aerodrome on the Potomac River, 7 October 1903 (from History of aviation)
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  Clément Ader Avion III (1897 photograph) (from History of aviation)
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  Leonardo da Vinci's ornithopter design (from History of aviation)
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  German Taube monoplane, illustration from 1917 (from History of aviation)
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  1928 issue of Popular Aviation (now Flying magazine), which became the largest aviation magazine with a circulation of 100,000. (from History of aviation)
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  Me 262, world first operational jet fighter (from History of aviation)
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  Sailplane, a Rolladen-Schneider LS4 (from General aviation)
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  Flagg biplane from 1933 (from History of aviation)
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  Apollo 11 lifts off on its mission to land a man on the Moon (from History of aviation)
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  Nieuport IV, operated by most of the world's air forces before WW1 for reconnaissance and bombing, including during the Italian-Turkish war (from History of aviation)
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  Cathay Pacific's first class cabin on board a Boeing 747-400 (from Wide-body aircraft)
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  Daedalus working on Icarus' wings (from History of aviation)
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  The Wright Military Flyer aboard a wagon in 1908 (from History of aviation)
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  General aviation aircraft at Cheb Airfield in Czech Republic (from General aviation)
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  Experimental helicopter by Enrico Forlanini (1877), exposed at the Museo nazionale della scienza e della tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci of Milan, Italy (from History of aviation)
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  "Map of Air Routes and Landing Places in Great Britain, as temporarily arranged by the Air Ministry for civilian flying", published in 1919, showing Hounslow, near London, as the hub (from History of aviation)
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  The economy class cabin of an Airbus A350 (from Wide-body aircraft)
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  The Wright Flyer: the first sustained flight with a powered, controlled aircraft (from History of aviation)
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  The business class cabin on an A350 (from Wide-body aircraft)
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  French reconnaissance balloon L'Intrépide of 1796, the oldest existing flying device, in the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, Vienna (from History of aviation)
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  1843 artist's impression of John Stringfellow's plane Ariel flying over the Nile (from History of aviation)
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  The Aeroplane of Victor Tatin, 1879. (from History of aviation)
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  La France flying in 1885 (from History of aviation)
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  "Governable parachute" design of 1852 (from History of aviation)
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  Concorde, G-BOAB, in storage at London Heathrow Airport following the end of all Concorde flying. This aircraft flew for 22,296 hours between its first flight in 1976 and final flight in 2000 (from History of aviation)
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  Early Voisin biplane (from History of aviation)
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  Jean-Marie Le Bris and his flying machine, Albatros II, 1868 (from History of aviation)
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  Robinson R22, a light piston-engine helicopter (from General aviation)
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  Alberto Santos-Dumont flying the Demoiselle over Paris (from History of aviation)
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  Qantas De Havilland biplane, c. 1930 (from History of aviation)
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  Map of record breaking flights of the 1920s (from History of aviation)
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  Planophore model aeroplane by Alphonse Pénaud, 1871 (from History of aviation)
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  Woodcut print of a kite from John Bate's 1635 book The Mysteryes of Nature and Art (from History of aviation)
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  Otto Lilienthal, 29 May 1895 (from History of aviation)
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  Cessna CitationJet/M2, part of the Citation family of business jets (from General aviation)
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  The 14-bis, or Oiseau de proie (from History of aviation)
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  A Boeing 787 Dreamliner of United Airlines landing at Beijing Capital International Airport in December 2018. (from Wide-body aircraft)

In the news

Wikinews Aviation portal

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

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  Free-content news

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  Collection of quotations

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Selected biography

Air Marshal Sir George Jones KBE, CB, DFC (18 October 1896 – 24 August 1992) was a senior commander in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). He rose from being a private soldier in World War I to Air Marshal in 1948. He served as Chief of the Air Staff from 1942 to 1952, the longest continuous tenure of any RAAF chief. Jones was a surprise appointee to the Air Force’s top role, and his achievements in the position were coloured by a divisive relationship during World War II with his head of operations and nominal subordinate, Air Vice Marshal William Bostock.

Jones first saw action as an infantryman in the Gallipoli campaign of 1915, before transferring to the Australian Flying Corps the following year. Initially an air mechanic, he undertook flying training in 1917 and was posted to a fighter squadron in France, achieving seven victories to become an ace. After a short spell in civilian life following World War I, he joined the newly-formed RAAF in 1921, rising steadily through training and personnel commands prior to World War II.

He did not actively seek the position of Chief of the Air Staff before being appointed in 1942, and his conflict with Bostock—with whom he had been friends for 20 years—was partly the result of a divided command structure, which neither man had any direct role in shaping. After World War II Jones had overall responsibility for transforming what was then the world's fourth largest air force into a peacetime service that was also able to meet overseas commitments in Malaya and Korea. Following his retirement from the RAAF he continued to serve in the aircraft industry and later ran unsuccessfully for political office.

Selected Aircraft

The Convair B-36 was a strategic bomber built by Convair for the United States Air Force, the first to have truly intercontinental range. Unofficially nicknamed the "Peacemaker", the B-36 was the first thermonuclear weapon delivery vehicle, the largest piston aircraft ever to be mass-produced, and the largest warplane of any kind.

The B-36 was the only American aircraft with the range and payload to carry such bombs from airfields on American soil to targets in the USSR, as storing nuclear weapons in foreign countries was diplomatically delicate. The nuclear deterrent the B-36 afforded may have kept the Soviet Army from fighting alongside the North Korean and Chinese armies during the Korean War. Convair touted the B-36 as an "aluminum overcast," a "long rifle" to give SAC a global reach. When General Curtis LeMay headed SAC (1949-57) and turned it into an effective nuclear delivery force, the B-36 formed the heart of his command. Its maximum payload was more than four times that of the B-29, even exceeding that of the B-52.

• Span: 230 ft 0 in (70.10 m)
• Length: 162 ft 1 in (49.40 m)
• Height: 46 ft 9 in (14.25 m)
• Engines: 6× Pratt & Whitney R-4360-53 "Wasp Major" radials, 3,800 hp (2,500 kW) each
• Cruising Speed: 230 mph (200 kn, 380 km/h) with jets off
• Range: 6,795 mi (5,905 nmi, 10,945 km) with 10,000 lb (4,535 kg) payload
• First Flight: 8 August 1946

Today in Aviation

December 2

• 2012 – Syrian Air Force jets pound rebel-held suburbs around Damascus, killing and wounding dozens in an offensive to push rebels away from the Damascus International Airport and stop them from closing in on the capital.

• 2012 – Syria announces that Damascus International Airport has reopened and is running scheduled flights after being closed for three days due to fighting between government and rebel forces in the area.

• 2010 – US Navy F/A-18C Hornet, BuNo 165184, 'AD-351', suffers port undercarriage collapse on landing at NAF El Centro, California, at 1615 hrs., and departs runway. The pilot ejects safely.

• 2009 – Merpati Nusantara Airlines Fokker 100 PK-MJD makes an emergency landing at El Tari Airport, Kupang when the left main gear fails to extend. There are no injuries among the passengers and crew.

• 2004 – The pilot of a Blue Angels McDonnell-Douglas F/A-18, BuNo 161956, ejects approximately one mile off Perdido Key, Florida, after reporting mechanical problems and loss of power. Lt. Ted Steelman suffered minor injuries and fully recovered.

• 1996 – A U.S. Navy Beechcraft T-34C Turbo Mentor crashes at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, killing the instructor and his student navigator from Italy. The pair, flying out of NAS Pensacola, Florida, were practicing maneuvers.

• 1993 – Launch: Space Shuttle Endeavour STS-61 at 10:53 am EDT. Mission highlights: Hubble Space Telescope servicing.

• 1992 – Launch: Space Shuttle Discovery STS-53 at 13:24:00 UTC. Mission highlights: Partially classified 10th and final DoD mission. Likely deployment of SDS2 satellite.

• 1990 – Launch: Space Shuttle Columbia STS-35 at 1:49:01 am EST. Mission highlights: Use of ASTRO-1 observatory.

• 1988 – Launch: Space Shuttle Atlantis STS-27 at 09:30:34 EST. Mission highlights: Third classified DoD mission; Lacrosse 1 deployment.

• 1986 – Pacific Western Airlines merged with Canadian Pacific Airlines to form Canadian Airlines.

• 1986 – An Air France Concorde returns to Paris after an 18-day around the world trip with 94 passengers.

• 1977 – In the 1977 Benghazi Libyan Arab Airlines Tu-154 crash, a Tupolev Tu-154 leased from Balkan Bulgarian Airlines crashes near Benghazi, Libya due to fuel starvation, killing 59 of 165 on board.

• 1976 – The Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, an ex-American Airlines 747 which has been adapted to carry the US reusable space shuttle, makes its flight.

• 1968 – Wien Consolidated Airlines Flight 55, a Fairchild F-27B, crashes into Pedro Bay, Alaska. All 39 passengers and crew on board are killed.

• 1965 – USS Enterprise becomes the first nuclear-powered warship to see combat, launching air strikes at the Viet Cong near Bien Hoa.

• 1964 – SAC Boeing B-47E-125-BW Stratojet, 53-2398, of the 380th Bomb Wing, suffers collapse of forward main gear unit, skids off right side of runway at Plattsburgh AFB, New York, crew escapes safely. Airframe struck off charge 13 January 1965.

• 1959 – A USAF Douglas VC-47D Skytrain, 43-49024, c/n 14840/26285, built as C-47B-10-DK, crashes and burns in woods 10 miles (16 km) N of Oslo, Norway, killing all four on board. There was fog in the area at the time of the accident.

• 1950 – (2–25) Four hundred aircraft from seven United Nations aircraft carriers support U. N. ground forces with air strikes while U. S. Air Force aircraft drop supplies to them as they break out of their encirclement in northern Korea and are evacuated successfully by sea from Hungnam in the Battle of Chosin Reservoir.

• 1948 – First flight of the Beechcraft T-34 Mentor

• 1945 – First flight of the Bristol 170

• 1945 – First flight of the Handley Page Hermes

• 1943 – First Canadian-built Mosquito aircraft saw action over Berlin with RAF 139 Squadron.

• 1943 – A night raid by 105 German Junkers Ju 88 bombers surprise the brilliantly lit Italian port of Bari while it is crowded with about 30 Allied ships, meeting little opposition. A sheet of flame from a burning tanker spreads over the harbor; 16 ships carrying 38,000 tons (34,473,374 kg) of cargo are destroyed, eight are damaged, and a quantity of mustard gas is released from the cargo of one stricken ship; at least 125 American personnel alone are killed; and the port does not return to full operations for three weeks. It is the most destructive single air raid against shipping since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.

• 1941 – Adolf Hitler orders the Luftwaffe’s Fliegerkorps II to redeploy from the Soviet Union to Sicily and North Africa and together with Fliegerkorps X to form Luftflotte 2 under the command of Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, and orders Kesselring to achieve air superiority over southern Italy and North Africa, suppress Allied forces on Malta, ensure safe passage of Axis convoys to North Africa, paralyze Allied sea traffic in the Mediterranean, and prevent Allied supplies from arriving at Tobruk and Malta. The redeployment will reverse the balance of power at sea in the Mediterranean in favor of the Axis.

• 1939 – New York’s La Guardia Airport opened for service!

• 1937 – First flight of the Brewster F2A Buffalo

• 1919 – First flight of the Handley Page Type W.

References

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