2003 in aviation

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This is a list of aviation-related events from 2003:

Contents

[edit] Events

[edit] January

[edit] February

[edit] May

[edit] June

  • 26 June – The NASA Helios Prototype unmanned aerial vehicle breaks up in flight and crashes into the Pacific Ocean about 10 miles (16 km) west of Kauai, Hawaii, during a remotely piloted systems checkout flight in preparation for an endurance test scheduled for July.[2]

[edit] July

[edit] August

[edit] September

[edit] October

  • 15 October – Yang Liwei becomes the People's Republic of China's first man in space.
  • 24 October, Concorde makes its last scheduled commercial flight.

[edit] November

[edit] December

  • 17 December – The 100th anniversary of the first flight of the Wright Brothers in the Wright Flyer is celebrated as the 100th birthday of aviation.
  • 17 December – SpaceShipOne becomes the first privately built, manned aircraft to fly faster than the speed of sound,
  • 25 December – UTA Flight 141, a severely overloaded chartered Boeing 727–223, fails to become airborne during its takeoff attempt from Cadjehoun Airport in Cotonou, Benin. It runs off the end of the runway and crashes on a beach along the Bight of Benin, killing 151 of the 163 people on board. All 12 survivors as well as two people on the ground are injured. Newspaper reports create rumors that the Boeing 727 involved is N844AA, which had disappeared after being stolen in May, but the rumors prove unfounded; the accident aircraft is 3X-GDO.

[edit] First flights

[edit] March

[edit] May

[edit] July

  • 28 July – Adam A700 AdamJet
  • 29 July – SpaceShipOne (first manned captive flight)

[edit] August

  • 1 August – First successful supersonic flight of the HAL Light Combat Aircraft's (LCA's) first technology demonstrator, TD-1.
  • 7 August – SpaceShipOne (first free-flight)

[edit] December

  • 17 December – SpaceShipOne (first powered flight)

[edit] Entered service

[edit] References

  1. ^ Goodspeed, Hill, "Where Naval Aviation History is Manifest," Naval History, June 2011, p. 35.
  2. ^ "Helios Prototype Solar Aircraft Lost In Flight Mishap", Science Daily, 1 July 2003, accessed 8 September 2003
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