Portal:Aviation

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The Aviation Portal

A Boeing 747

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

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

A Bell 212 with a helicopter bucket
A Bell 212 with a helicopter bucket
A Bell 212 Twin Huey carrying a helicopter bucket, a specialized bucket suspended on a cable to deliver water for helitack operations, which is aerial firefighting using helicopters. Helitack crews are used to attack a wildfire and gain early control of it, especially when inaccessibility would make it difficult or impossible for ground crews to respond in the same amount of time.

Did you know

...that Guy Menzies flew the first solo trans-Tasman flight (from Sydney to New Zealand) in 1931, but landed upside-down in a swamp? ...that one of the first aircraft to cross the Atlantic was the Italian Savoia-Marchetti S.55 flying boat, which went on to serve in the Luftwaffe in WWII? ...that during Operation Deep Freeze II in 1956, US Navy Rear Admiral George J. Dufek commanded the first aircraft to land at the South Pole, the C-47 Skytrain “Que Sera Sera”?

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

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 Beechcraft King Air is a line of twin-turboprop aircraft produced by the Beech Aircraft Corporation (now the Beechcraft Division of Hawker Beechcraft). The King Air has been in continuous production since 1964, the longest production run of any civilian turboprop aircraft. It has outlasted all of its previous competitors and as of 2006 is one of only two twin-turboprop business airplanes in production (the other is the Piaggio Avanti).

Historically, the King Air family comprises a number of models that fall into four families, the Model 90 series, Model 100 series, Model 200 series, and Model 300 series. The last two types were originally marketed as the Super King Air, but the "Super" moniker was dropped in 1996. As of 2006, the only small King Air in production is the conventional-tail C90GT.

  • Span: 50 ft 3 in (15.33 m)
  • Length: 35 ft 6in (10.82 m)
  • Height: 14 ft 3 in (4.35 m)
  • Engines: 2 × Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-21 turboprops , 550 shp (410 kW) each
  • Cruising Speed: 284 mph (247 knots ,457 km/h)
  • First Flight: May 1963
More selected aircraft Read more...

Today in Aviation

June 5

  • 2002 – Launch of Space Shuttle Endeavour STS-111 at 21:22:49 UTC. Mission highlights: ISS supply, crew rotation, Mobile Base System.
  • 1991 – Launch of Space Shuttle Columbia STS-40 at 9:24:51 am EDT. Mission highlights: Spacelab mission.
  • 1991 – A Royal Australian Air Force McDonnell Douglas F/A-18A Hornet, A21-041, of 75 Squadron, crashes 100 kilometres NE of Weipa, Queensland. The pilot was killed. The wreckage was found in July 1994.
  • 1989 – The massive Antonov An-225 Mriya flies in to Paris-Le Bourget for the 1989 Paris Air Show, carrying the Soviet Shuttle Buran on its back. When it takes of from Kiev to fly to Paris, the combination has a takeoff weight of 1,234,600 lb, the greatest weight ever lifted into the air.
  • 1969 – The Tupolev Tu-144 supersonic airliner becomes the first aircraft of its class to fly through the sound barrier when it exceeds Mach 1 at an altitude of 36,000 ft.
  • 1969 – Rivet Amber, an RC-135E, 62-4137, operating out of Shemya AFB, went down in the Bering Sea. Despite a thorough search of the area, no wreckage and no survivors were ever found. The best theory is that the plane suffered some sort of catastrophic mechanical failure, as the last radio contact from the aircraft mentioned “vibration in flight”. Rivet Amber was returning to Eielson AFB for maintenance with a crew of 19 on board.
  • 1969 – The American bombing of North Vietnam resumes after a seven-month pause.
  • 1968 – North Vietnam demands an unconditional end to American bombing of its territory.
  • 1965 – The 1965 Fort Benning Mid-Air Helicopter Collision was a helicopter collision over Fort Benning, Georgia that left eighteen people dead. It occurred around 9:50 am.
  • 1965 – The U.S. Navy begins full-time staffing of Dixie Station off South Vietnam by one aircraft carrier.
  • 1965 – The U.S. Navy’s aircraft carrier presence in the Gulf of Tonkin off Vietnam reaches five ships.
  • 1963 – President Kennedy announces that his administration would seek funds for the sponsored development of a supersonic transport aircraft.
  • 1962 – A number three following RAF Hawker Hunter T.7 trainer (XL610) from No. 111 Squadron based at RAF Wattisham on a routine training flight flying in formation with two other aircraft crashes near Silk Willoughby, Lincolnshire, UK killing two crew members.
  • 1958 – Second prototype Saunders-Roe SR.53, XD151, crashed during an abandoned take-off whilst testing at RAE Boscombe Down, killing its pilot, Squadron Leader John S. Booth, DFC. Project cancelled.
  • 1956 – A USAF Northrop F-89 Scorpion fighter jet of the 18th Fighter-Interceptor Squadron armed with 104 live rockets, strikes an automobile during an aborted take-off at Wold-Chamberlain Field, Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, killing three of the five occupants of the vehicle; both F-89 crew members survive.
  • 1952 – Exercise Bluebird: a Royal Netherlands Air Force Republic F-84 Thunderjet collided with the mast of the British Royal Navy motor launch HMML 2582 and crashed onto the deck in flames. The launch sank with the loss of fifteen crew and the pilot of the Thunderjet. The accident occurred in the Marsdiep, Netherlands.
  • 1951 – The U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps begin Operation Strangle, a day-and-night air interdiction campaign against enemy roads, bridges, and tunnels across the width of the Korean Peninsula between 38 degrees 15 min North and 39 degrees 15 min North. It will continue until February 1952, but without the success hoped for it.
  • 1950 – RCAF Colours were presented to the Force by the Governor-General, Field Marshal Earl Alexander of Tunis, at Ottawa, Ontario.
  • 1948 – Northrop YB-49-NO, 42-102368, c/n 1488, crashes in desert near Muroc Air Force Base, California after both outer wings become detached from center section during spin recovery, killing pilot Maj. Daniel Forbes, co-pilot Capt. Glen Edwards, and three crew. Forbes Air Force Base, Kansas, is named for the pilot, and Muroc is renamed Edwards Air Force Base for the co-pilot on 5 December 1949. Flying wing bomber design will be revived in the 1980s as the B-2 Spirit.
  • 1945 – A typhoon strikes U.S. Navy Task Force 38 southeast of Okinawa. The aircraft carriers USS Hornet (CV-12), USS Bennington (CV-20), USS Belleau Wood (CVL-24), USS San Jacinto (CVL-30), USS Windham Bay (CVE-92), and USS Salamaua (CVE-96) are damaged and the task force loses 76 aircraft.
  • 1944 – Two Japanese bombers make a destructive strike against about 100 Allied aircraft paired wingtip-to-wingtip at Wakde, putting the base out of action for several days.
  • 1944 – The B-29 Superfortress flies its first combat mission; 98 B-29s take off from bases in India and attack railroad shops in Bangkok, Thailand. Five are lost, none to enemy action.
  • 1943 – In a battle over the Russell Islands between 81 Japanese Mitsubishi A6 M Zero fighters and 110 Allied aircraft, the Japanese lose 24 aircraft in exchange for seven U.S. fighters.
  • 1931 – C.W.A. Scott breaks the record for the fastest solo flight from Australia to England, flying the 10,660 miles (17,160 km) from Wyndham, Australia to Lympne, England from May 26 to in 10 days 23 hours piloting a DH.60 Moth (Gipsy II).
  • 1918 – Douglas Campbell, the first American to become an ace while flying for an American unit, scores his sixth and final victory. Badly wounded during the flight, he sees no further combat.
  • 1917 – The United States Navy’s First Aeronautical Detachment disembarks from the collier USS Jupiter in France under the command of Kenneth Whiting. It is the first U.S. military unit to arrive in Europe.
  • 1909 – The first monoplane flight of over one hour is made by Englishman Hubert Latham on the Antoinette IV for one hour, seven minutes, 37 seconds.
  • 1909 – John Berry and Paul McCullough win the U.S.’s first National Balloon Race, covering 377.9 miles – from Indianapolis, Indiana to Fort Payne, Alabama – in 25 hours 35 minutes.
  • 1783 – Unmanned flight of the Montgolfier brothers hot-air-balloon (Montgolfière) in Vivarais, France. The Montgolfiers demonstrate a hot air balloon in public, at Annonay.

References

  1. ^ Solar Impulse: What Happened in 2012?
  2. ^ Abdennebi, Zakia, "Solar Plane Completes Maiden Intercontinental Trip," Reuters, 5 June 2012, 7:22 p.m. EDT.
  3. ^ "Libyan Live Blog: June 6, 2011 – 21:45". Al Jazeera. 6 June 2011. Retrieved 6 June 2011.
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