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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 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. Clément Ader built the "Ader Éole" in France and made an uncontrolled, powered hop in 1890. This is the first powered aircraft, although it did not achieve controlled flight. 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

Kai Tak Airport in 2009
Kai Tak Airport in 2009
Kai Tak Airport (Chinese: 啟德機場) was the international airport of Hong Kong from 1925 until 1998. It was officially known as the Hong Kong International Airport (Chinese: 香港國際機場) from 1954 to July 6, 1998, when it was closed and replaced by the new Hong Kong International Airport at Chek Lap Kok, 30 km to the west. It is often known as Hong Kong Kai Tak International Airport (Chinese: 香港啟德國際機場), or simply Kai Tak, to distinguish it from its successor which is often referred to as Chek Lap Kok Airport (Chinese: 赤鱲角機場).

With numerous skyscrapers and mountains located to the north and its only runway jutting out into Victoria Harbour, landings at the airport were dramatic to experience and technically demanding for pilots. The History Channel program Most Extreme Airports ranked it as the 6th most dangerous airport in the world.

The airport was home to Hong Kong's international carrier Cathay Pacific, as well as regional carrier Dragonair, freight airline Air Hong Kong and Hong Kong Airways. The airport was also home to the former RAF Kai Tak. (Full article...)

Selected image

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

Did you know

...that after the Red Baron, French ace René Fonck had the most confirmed World War I aerial victories? ...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 loss of nine military crew members and passengers when Buffalo 461 was shot down over Syria in 1974, remains the largest single-incident loss of life in Canadian peacekeeping history?

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

Helmut Paul Emil Wick (5 August 1915 – 28 November 1940) was a German Luftwaffe ace and the fourth recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves (German: Ritterkreuz des Eisernen Kreuzes mit Eichenlaub). The Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross and its higher grade, the Oak Leaves, was awarded by the Third Reich to recognise extreme bravery in battle or successful military leadership. It was Germany's highest military decoration at the time of its presentation to Helmut Wick.

Born in Mannheim, Wick joined the Luftwaffe in 1936 and was trained as a fighter pilot. He was assigned to Jagdgeschwader 2 "Richthofen" (JG 2—2nd Fighter Wing), and saw combat in the Battles of France and Britain. Promoted to Major in October 1940, he was given the position of Geschwaderkommodore (wing commander) of JG 2—the youngest in the Luftwaffe to hold this rank and position. He was shot down in the vicinity of the Isle of Wight on 28 November 1940 and posted as missing in action, presumed dead. By then he had been credited with destroying 56 enemy aircraft in aerial combat, making him the leading German fighter pilot at the time. Flying the Messerschmitt Bf 109, he claimed all of his victories against the Western Allies.

Selected Aircraft

The Yakovlev Yak-42 is a line of tri-jet aircraft produced by the aircraft company Yakolev. The Yak 42 was produced from 1980-2003.

Historically, the yak-42 was competition for older Russian aircraft companies. The Yak-42 was only made in one passenger variant, but it was used in many tests of equipment.

  • Crew: 3
  • Span: 114 ft 5 in (34.88 m)
  • Length: 119 ft 4 in (36.38 m)
  • Height: 32 ft 3 in (9.83 m)
  • Engines: 3× Lotarev D-36 turbofan
  • Cruise Speed: 740 km/h (399 knots, 460 mph) (economy cruise)
  • Range: 4,000 km (2,158 nmi, 2,458 mi) (with maximum fuel)
More selected aircraft Read more...

Today in Aviation

February 13

  • 2013 – South Airlines Flight 8971, an Antonov An-24 with 52 people on board, overshoots the runway and crash-lands while attempting to make an emergency landing in fog at Donetsk International Airport in Donetsk, Ukraine, killing five people.
  • 2009 – BA CityFlyer Flight 8456, an Avro RJ100, registration G-BXAR, is substantially damaged when the nosewheel collapses on landing at London City Airport. All 71 people on board are successfully evacuated via emergency chutes.
  • 2007 – Death of Air Marshal Sir Richard (Dickie) Gordon Wakeford KCB OBE LVO AFC, officer in the Royal Air Force for 36 years, from 1941 to 1977. Beginning as a pilot of flying boats with Coastal Command, he became a flying instructor, and commanded the Queen’s Flight.
  • 2006 – The 5,000th 737 comes off the production line. The 737 is the most-produced large commercial jet airplane in aviation history.
  • 2003 – Continental and US Airways launch interline e-Ticketing.
  • 2002 – The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) takes over responsibilities for airport security from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).
  • 1995 – $US 5 million in damage is caused when a violent thunderstorm hits Miami International Airport. Four airliners and nine airbridges are seriously damaged.
  • 1991 – Two U. S. Air Force F-117 A Nighthawk stealth fighters bomb a low structure in Baghdad which the Coalition believes houses an Iraqi military command-and-control facility. The attack destroys an air raid shelter, with Iraq claiming that over 400 civilians in it were killed, although the Coalition stands firm on its claim that the target was a military facility within which Iraq had illegally sheltered civilians to gain a propaganda advantage if they were killed. Iraqi antiaircraft artillery downs a Royal Saudi Air Force F-5E Tiger II fighter over southwestern Iraq.
  • 1972 – The Soviet Union has started to use Cuba as a base from which to spy on the US. The first mission is flown by two Soviet Tu-95, which surveys part of the east coast.
  • 1969 – Death of Florence Mary Taylor CBE (born Parsons), first qualified female architect, first woman to train as an engineer in Australia and first woman in Australia to fly in a heavier-than-air craft
  • 1967 – President Lyndon B. Johnson orders a six-day halt of American bombing raids over Vietnam during the visit of Soviet Premier Alexei Kosygin to London.
  • 1965 – President Lyndon B. Johnson authorizes Operation Rolling Thunder, a campaign of air strikes against North Vietnam.
  • 1964 – Birth of Stephen Gerard Bowen, US Navy submariner and a NASA astronaut.
  • 1963 – Pacific Southwest Airlines becomes a public corporation.
  • 1960 – France detonates its first nuclear weapon.
  • 1958 – A British Ministry of Defence White Paper makes Britain’s nuclear weapons program public knowledge.
  • 1957 – Death of Richard “Ricardo” Wenzl, German WWI flying ace.
  • 1955 – A Sabena DC-6 crashes on Mount Terminillo, near Rieti, Italy, killing 29, including actress and model Marcella Mariani.
  • 1950 – 1950 British Columbia B-36 crash: AA U.S. Air Force Convair B-36B-15-CF Peacemaker, 44-92075, of the 436th Bomb Squadron, 7th Bomb Wing, in transit from Eielson AFB, Alaska to Carswell AFB, Texas, loses three of six engines, suffers icing. To lighten aircraft, crew jettisons Mark 4 nuclear bomb casing over the Pacific Ocean from 8,000 feet (2,400 m). High explosives detonate on contact, large shockwave seen, 17 crew later bails out safely over Princess Royal Island, but five (the first to depart the bomber) are not recovered and are assumed to have come down in water and drowned. Aircraft flies 210 miles (340 km) with no crew, impacting in the Skeena Mountains at 6,000 feet (1,800 m), east of Stewart, British Columbia. Wreckage found in September 1953.
  • 1945 – 13-15 – Allied bombers attack Dresden with incendiary weapons, destroying most of the city and killing some 50,000 people.
  • 1945 – A Douglas R4D-6 (Bu. No. 50765) of Air Transport Squadron 3 of the US Navy crashes into the sea near Alameda, California, killing all twenty-one passengers and three crew.
  • 1944 – Carrier aircraft of U. S. Navy Task Force 58 strike Eniwetok.
  • 1943 – First combat mission of the Vought F4U Corsair, when Guadalcanal-based Marine Fighter Squadron 124 (VMF-124) Corsairs escort U. S. Army Air Forces B-24 Liberator bombers on a raid against Kahili Airfield on Bougainville. They encounter no enemy aircraft.
  • 1942 – One hundred Japanese aircraft drop 700 Japanese paratroopers onto Palembang on Sumatra.
  • 1942 – Birth of Captain Donald Edward Williams, NASA astronaut and test pilot.
  • 1939 – Birth of Valery Ilyich Rozhdestvensky, Soviet cosmonaut.
  • 1937 – Birth of Sigmund Werner Paul Jähn, German pilot and first German to fly in space as part of the Soviet Union’s Intercosmos program.
  • 1935 – Bruno Hauptmann is convicted of murder for the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh’s 20-month-old son Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. He would be executed in the New Jersey’s infamous “Old Smokey” electric chair a year later.
  • 1930 – Death of Karl Odebrett, German WWI fighter ace.
  • 1928 – Sole prototype Blackburn F.1 Turcock, the firm's first fighter project in some eight years, an attempt to produce an aircraft equally suited as a land-based interceptor and as a ship-borne fighter, found no interest from the Air Ministry, but Blackburn built one as a private venture. It first flew (without guns) on 14 November 1927, piloted by Flt. Lt. Arthur George Loton, AFC, and having been purchased by the Turkish government was named the Turcock. Allocated the British registration G-EBVP for test and delivery purposes, it was destroyed in a flying accident this date. No other models of the type were built.
  • 1928 – Prospecting Airways Ltd. was formed for aerial prospecting.
  • 1923 – Chuck Yeager, American fighter & test pilot, and the first person to break the “sound barrier”. in level flight, is born (1947).
  • 1919 – The first post-war French commercial service is established on a route from Paris to Lille for the carriage of food and clothing to France’s northern departments.
  • 1918 – Birth of Junichi Sasai, Japanese Navy WWII fighter ace.
  • 1913 – At the second British Aero Show in London, the world’s first airplane specifically designed to carry a gun, 37-mm cannon on biplane, is displayed for the first time. Called Destroyer and built by Vickers, Sons & Maxim, it is officially called the Experimental Fighting Biplane No.1 (E. F. B.1).
  • 1912 – Birth of Giovanni Battista Boscutti, WWII Italian pilot.
  • 1903 – Birth of Charles William Anderson Scott, AFC, British aviator.
  • 1903 – Birth of Georgy Mikhailovich Beriev, founder of Soviet Union’s Beriev Design Bureau which concentrated on amphibious aircraft.
  • 1895 – Birth of Arturo Ferrarin, Italian raid pilot.
  • 1893 – Birth of Stearne Tighe Edwards, Canadian WWI fighter ace.
  • 1893 – Birth of Campbell Alexander Hoy, British WWI flying ace, And RAF officer until end of WWII.
  • 1893 – Birth of Franz Brandt, German WWI flying ace.

References

Edit today's anniversaries – February Archive – All anniversaries...


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