Portal:Aviation/Today in aviation

2009 – Batavia Air Flight 711, operated by a Boeing 737-400 made an emergency landing at El Tari Airport, Kupang after a problem was discovered with the landing gear.

2001 – Crossair Flight 3597, an Avro RJ100, crashes near Bassersdorf, Switzerland, while attempting to land in Zürich. Of the 28 passengers and five crew members on board, 21 passengers (including dance singer Melanie Thornton of La Bouche) and three crew members died.

1992 – China Southern Airlines Flight 3943, a Boeing 737-300, crashes on descent to Guilin Airport, killing all 141 aboard.

1991 – Launch: Space Shuttle Atlantis STS-44 at 6:44:00 pm EST. Mission highlights: DSP satellite deployment.

1972 – Two USAF McDonnell Douglas RF-4C Phantom IIs of the 363d Tactical Reconnaissance Wing, Shaw AFB, South Carolina, suffer mid-air collision over the Atlantic Ocean about 30 miles off of Pawley's Island at ~1450 hrs. Two crew from one Phantom recovered 27 miles out to sea by Bell UH-1N Huey, Save 53, of Detachment 8, 44th ARRSq, out of Myrtle Beach AFB, but two others including one officer of HQ 9th Air Force, Shaw AFB, are lost.

1971 – A man reported as D. B. Cooper hijacks Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 305, a Boeing 727, out of Portland, Oregon, releasing the passengers in exchange for US$200,000 and four parachutes; the crew takes off with Cooper on board, and he parachutes from the plane; Cooper is never found and his fate remains unknown, although a roll of bills from his ransom is found in a riverbed many years later.

1970 – Lockheed U-2R, 68-10335, Article 057, seventh airframe of the first R-model order, first flown 30 July 1968, registered N815X, delivered to the CIA 29 August 1968. Crashes at Taoyuan Air Base, Taiwan, on landing after a routine, high-altitude training flight, this date, ROCAF pilot Capt. Denny Huang KWF. At touchdown he skips slightly and begins drifting to starboard. Exacerbated by a 12-knot crosswind, the aircraft leaves the runway, whereupon the pilot applies power to go around. Before the engine spools up, the airframe strikes a six-foot high runway marker. Begins a slow climbing turn to port but nose-high angle causes stall, jet crashes and burns. The Accident Board recommends that the Dash One pilot's manual be amended to emphasize that a go-around should not be attempted after loss of directional control on landing. This was the first loss of an R-model.

1968 – Luis Armando Pena Soltren, Jose Rafael Rios Cruz and Miguel Castro coerce the pilot of Pan Am Flight 281 out of New York's John F. Kennedy Airport on a scheduled route to Puerto Rico to divert to Havana, Cuba. Passengers were evacuated from Cuba by a U.S. State Department aircraft. There were no fatalities.

1966 – TABSO Flight 101, an Ilyushin IL-18B, crashes into a wooded hillside shortly after takeoff from Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, killing all 82 aboard.

1956 – A Boeing B-47E-60-BW Stratojet, 51-5233, c/n 450518, of the 341st Bomb Wing, runs off runway upon landing at Dyess AFB, Texas, tearing away the port inboard engine nacelle. Aircraft may have been also attempting a go-around. All crew survived.

1953 – A USAF North American F-86D Sabre crashes near Marianna, Florida this date. The pilot ejects but was killed when his chute fails to deploy, his fighter coming down ~10 miles N of Graham Air Base. Col. Lewis H. Norley, commanding officer of the base, said that due to "unknown circumstances" the chute failed to function. Rescue planes from Maxwell Field at Montgomery, Alabama, and Tyndall Air Force Base, Panama City, Florida, discovered the pilot's body. Norley said that the pilot's identity will not be released until notification of the next of kin.

1952 – The second Boeing EB-50A Superfortress, 46-003, which spends most of its operational career used for testing, first by Boeing, and later by the Air Research and Development Command, and Air Material Command, primarily at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, is involved in a fatal accident at Aberdeen, Maryland this date. Four crew were killed when it crashed in the Bush River near Edgewood, Maryland.

1944 – 111 United States Army Air Forces B-29 Superfortresses attack Tokyo, targeting the Musashino aircraft plant. Although they do not damage the plant, it is the first strategic bombing raid against Japan from the Twentieth Air Force’s new bases in the Mariana Islands, and the first air attack of any kind on Tokyo except for the April 1942 Doolittle Raid.

1943 – The Japanese submarine I-175 torpedoes and sinks the U. S. Navy escort aircraft carrier USS Liscome Bay (CVE-56) 20 nautical miles (37 km) southwest of Butaritari with the loss of 644 lives, including that of Rear Admiral Henry M. Mullinnix; there are 272 survivors.

1943 – The first Allied aircraft – A damaged U. S. Marine Corps SBD Dauntless dive bomber – Lands on Bougainville.

1940 – First BCATP graduates from No. 1 Air Navigation School at Trenton, arrived at Liverpool, England.

1939 – BOAC is formed by the merger of Imperial Airways and the original British Airways.

1924 – A KLM Fokker F.VII makes the first flight from the Netherlands to the Dutch East Indies, taking 127 hours and 16 minutes.

1913 – Lieuts. Eric Lamar Ellington and Hugh M. Kelly of the 1st Aero Squadron, United States Army Aviation Corps, are killed this date in a fall of about eighty feet in a Wright Model C, Signal Corps 14. The accident occurred at ~0758 hrs. across the bay from San Diego, California on the grounds of the army school on North Island. On impact, the engine broke free, crushing the two aviators. Ellington Field, Texas, which opens on 1 November 1917, is named for Lt. Ellington.

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