On This Day in Aviation History

On This Day in Aviation History

1907 – Romanian Trajan Vuia begins tests of his airplane, newly fitted with steering surfaces. He makes a short flight of 33 feet in Paris, France.

1931 – The crash of a TWA Fokker F.10 at Bazaar, Kan., prompts the first grounding of an aircraft type. The grounding was ordered by the U.S. Commerce Department.

1945 – The final V-2 missile to hit England falls in Kent.

1977 – KLM Flight 4805 and Pan Am Flight 1736, both Boeing 747s, collide on the runway in Los Rodeos Airport on Tenerife in the Canary Islands; 583 of 644 people on board both aircraft are killed in the worst accident in the history of commercial aviation.

1999 – A U.S. Air Force Lockheed F-117A Nighthawk (shown above), on a bombing mission over Serbia, was shot down by a Federal Republic of Yugoslavia unit using a SA-3 Goa. The pilot ejected and the F-117A crashed in hostile territory.

2004 – First flight of the Eurofighter Typhoon.

Updated: March 27, 2013 — 12:53 PM
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