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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

Arkia Boeing 757-300
Arkia Boeing 757-300
Arkia Israeli Airlines (Hebrew: ארקיע, I will soar), usually referred to as Arkia, is an airline based in Tel Aviv, Israel. It is Israel's second largest airline operating scheduled domestic and international services as well as charter flights to Western Europe and the Mediterranean. Its main base is Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv, whilst it also operates significant numbers of flights out of Sde Dov Airport in Tel Aviv, Eilat Airport, and Ovda International Airport.

Arkia was founded in 1949 as Israel Inland Airlines when it became clear that there was demand for a local airline to connect the north of Israel (especially Tel Aviv) with the southern region of the Negev, as a subsidiary of El Al, Israel's national airline. Flights starting the following year with the airline unsing De Havilland DH.89 aircraft, followed by Douglas DC-3s, to connect Rosh Pina in the north to the port of Eilat in the south. El Al held a 50% stake in the airline at this time with Histadrut, Israel's labour federation, being the other shareholder. The airline later evolved to become Eilata Airlines, Aviron, and then to Arkia Israel Airlines. In its first year of service, Israel Inland carried 13,485 passengers on their twice weekly flight, operated by a Curtis Commando. (Full article...)

Selected image

Credit: NASA
A cutaway digram of an aircraft hangar.

Did you know

...that five USAAF airmen were awarded the Medal of Honor following Operation Tidal Wave, a low-level bombing of Romanian oil refineries on 1 August 1943? ...that the airfields captured in the battle of Tinian were used for the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? ... that while flying accidents were commonplace at RAAF training establishments during World War II, No. 8 Service Flying Training School's first fatality was from drowning?

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
Read and edit Wikinews

Associated Wikimedia

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

Selected biography

Amelia Earhart, c. 1928
Amelia Mary Earhart (July 24, 1897 – missing as of July 2, 1937), daughter of Edwin and Amy Earhart, was an American aviator and noted early female pilot who mysteriously disappeared over the Pacific Ocean during a circumnavigational flight in 1937.

By 1919 Earhart had enrolled at Columbia University to study pre-med but quit a year later to be with her parents in California. Later in Long Beach she and her father went to a stunt-flying exhibition and the next day she went on a ten minute flight.

Earhart had her first flying lesson at Kinner Field near Long Beach. Her teacher was Anita Snook, a pioneer female aviator. Six months later Earhart purchased a yellow Kinner Airster biplane which she named "Canary". On October 22, 1922, she flew it to an altitude of 14,000 feet, setting a women's world record.

After Charles Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, Amy Guest, a wealthy American living in London, England expressed interest in being the first woman to fly (or be flown) across the Atlantic Ocean, but after deciding the trip was too dangerous to make herself, she offered to sponsor the project, suggesting they find "another girl with the right image." While at work one afternoon in April 1928 Earhart got a phone call from a man who asked her, "Would you like to fly the Atlantic?"

Selected Aircraft

The Avro Lancaster was a British four-engine Second World War bomber aircraft made initially by Avro for the British Royal Air Force (RAF). It first saw active service in 1942, and together with the Handley-Page Halifax it was one of the main heavy bombers of the RAF, the RCAF and squadrons from other Commonwealth and European countries serving within RAF Bomber Command. The "Lanc" or "Lankie," as it became affectionately known, became the most famous and most successful of the Second World War night bombers, "delivering 608,612 tons of bombs in 156,000 sorties." Although the Lancaster was primarily a night bomber, it excelled in many other roles including daylight precision bombing, and gained worldwide renown as the "Dam Buster" used in the 1943 Operation Chastise raids on Germany's Ruhr Valley dams.

  • Span: 102 ft (31.09 m)
  • Length: 69 ft 5 in (21.18 m)
  • Height: 19 ft 7 in (5.97 m)
  • Engines: 4× Rolls-Royce Merlin XX V12 engines, 1,280 hp (954 kW) each
  • Maximum Speed: 240 knots (280 mph, 450 km/h) at 15,000 ft (5,600 m)
  • First Flight: 8 January 1941
  • Number built: 7,377
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Today in Aviation

October 7

  • 2009 – A Libyan Air Force Mikoyan MiG-23 Flogger crashes while taking part during an airshow for the Third Libyan Aviation Exhibition, LAVEX 2009 held at Mitiga International Airport, Tripoli, Libya. The aircraft travelling at low-level hit a one-storey house in the suburb of Souq Al-Jumaa in Tripoli killing the 2 crew and injuring two civilians.
  • 2008 – Qantas Flight 72 an Airbus A330-300 makes an emergency landing in Exmouth, Australia following a rapid descent that leaves over 70 people injured, 14 of them seriously.
  • 2003 – OH-58D Kiowa (92-0578) crashes inside Iraq, pilots survive.[1]
  • 2002 – Launch: Space Shuttle Atlantis STS-112 at 19:45:51 UTC. Mission highlights: ISS assembly flight 9A: S1 truss.
  • 1996 – First flight of the Boeing 777-200ER
  • 1982 – BA-55 a Belgian Air Force Dassault Mirage 5BA crashed into a quarry at Bierset, pilot killed.
  • 1963 – First flight of the Learjet 23 prototype, the very first Learjet built.
  • 1944 – The RCAF’s No. 6 Group struck at Dortmund; they lost only two out of a record 293 bombers.
  • 1944 – Luftwaffe night fighter ace Oberstleutnant Helmut Lent is fatally injured when his Junkers Ju 88G-6 night fighter crashes during a landing approach after a routine transit flight. He dies two days later, with his score at 110 kills, 103 of them at night.
  • 1934 – First flight of the First prototype Tupolev ANT-40RT which becomes Tupolev SB
  • 1932 – First flight of the Stipa-Caproni, a prototype aircraft employing Luigi Stipa’s “intubed propeller” concept, a forerunner of jet propulsion.
  • 1926 – The Boeing FB-5 (production version) makes its first flight.
  • 1909 – Glenn Curtiss becomes the first American to hold an FAI airplane certificate.
  • 1908 – Edith Ogilby Berg became the first American woman airplane passenger when she flew with Wilbur Wright.
  • 1903 – Samuel Pierpont Langley conducts the first tests of his full-sized man-carrying version of his earlier model aerodromes. The pilot, Charles Manly, nearly drowns when the machine slides off its launch apparatus atop a houseboat and falls into the Potomac River.
  • 1849 – Frenchman Francisque Arban flies over the Alps in a free balloon (Marseille-Subini near Turin).

References

  1. ^ "1992 USAF Serial Numbers". Retrieved 17 February 2010.
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