1912 – Hanna Reitsch, German test pilot, was born; she was a test pilot on the Junkers Ju 87 Stuka and Dornier Do 17 as well as one of the few pilots to fly the Focke-Achgelis Fa 61, the first fully controllable helicopter. 1939 – The Curtiss YP-37 (shown above), a single-engined fighter based on the company’s [...]

Frank Montgomery doesn’t fit the image of the typical Vietnam veteran. First of all, he’s 89 years old, and Vietnam wasn’t his first taste of a combat zone. A World War II veteran who also served during the Korean War, Montgomery was flying North American P-51 Mustang fighter planes before most of his fellow Vietnam [...]

Diving from 17,000 feet, the airspeed increasing to more than three times what I’m used to in a Cessna 172, my instinct to pull out of the back side of a 6,000-foot-vertical loop is premature and aggressive — an understandable reaction to the visual sense of unprotected free-fall. As the front-seat pilot, I sit so [...]

China Eastern Airlines received the 1,000th Boeing airplane made for its namesake country yesterday in a delivery in Seattle. The jet, a 737-800 with the Boeing Sky Interior painted in special peacock livery, will join China Eastern Yunnan Airlines. China Eastern currently operates the largest 737 fleet among Chinese airlines. Boeing, which calls China one of the [...]

1910 – Henri Fabre makes the first flights in the world’s first seaplane, which he invented, at Matigues, France. 1931 – Boeing Air Transport, National Air Transport, Varney Airlines and Pacific Air Transport combine as United Air Lines, providing coast-to-coast passenger and mail service in the U.S. It takes 27 hours to fly the route in one direction. 1961 – The Royal Canadian [...]

McChord Field, near Tacoma, Wash., has been home to several military cargo aircraft going back to World War II: the Douglas C-47 Skytrain, the Fairchild C-82 Packet, the Douglas C-124 Globemaster II and the Lockheed C-141 Starlifter. But none has been called to war for as long as the four-engine Boeing C-17 Globemaster III. McChord [...]

A solar-powered plane that has wowed aviation fans in Europe is preparing to fly across North America. The Swiss creators of the Solar Impulse are announcing today which U.S. cities the experimental plane will visit during its “Across America” tour that kicks off in May. Bertrand Piccard and André Borschberg will display the aircraft and discuss [...]

The plane used by Chinese President Xi Jinping for his ongoing four-nation visit will, unknown to many, be shared by common passengers after the tour, a senior official has revealed. Lu Peixin, former chief of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Protocol Department and former Chinese ambassador to the Republic of Slovenia, told regional newspaper the Legal [...]