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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 aircraft 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...)

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Airbus A380, the largest passenger jet in the world, entered commercial service in 2007.

Airbus SAS is an aircraft manufacturing subsidiary of EADS, a European aerospace consortium. Based in Toulouse, France and with significant activity across Europe, the company produces around half of the world's jet airliners. Airbus began as a consortium of aerospace manufacturers. Consolidation of European defence and aerospace companies around the turn of the century allowed the establishment of a simplified joint stock company in 2001, owned by EADS (80%) and BAE Systems (20%). After a protracted sale process BAE sold its shareholding to EADS on 13 October 2006. Airbus employs around 57,000 people at sixteen sites in four European Union countries: Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and Spain. Final assembly production is at Toulouse (France) and Hamburg (Germany). Airbus has subsidiaries in the United States, Japan and China. (Full article...)

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airfield traffic pattern

Credit: Ericg

An airfield traffic pattern is a standard path followed by aircraft when taking off or landing at an airport.The pattern (or circuit) is used to coordinate air traffic, and differs from straight-in approaches and departures in that aircraft remain in close proximity to the airport. Circuits are usually employed at small general aviation (GA) airfields and military airbases.

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Did you know

...that the Brimstone missile, an anti-tank guided missile, is carried by three Royal Air Force aeroplane types? ... that the Air Zoo in Kalamazoo, Michigan houses the only SR-71B Blackbird in existence? ... that on 28 May 1931, a Bellanca CH-300 fitted with a Packard DR-980 diesel engine set a 55-year record for staying aloft for 84 hours and 32 minutes without being refueled?

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The following are images from various aviation-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1D.H. Comet, the world's first jet airliner. As in this picture, it also saw RAF service (from History of aviation)
Image 2The Wright Military Flyer aboard a wagon in 1908 (from History of aviation)
Image 3Santos-Dumont's "Number 6" rounding the Eiffel Tower in the process of winning the Deutsch de la Meurthe Prize, October 1901 (from History of aviation)
Image 4The economy class cabin of an Airbus A350 (from Wide-body aircraft)
Image 5The Biot-Massia glider, restored and on display in the Musee de l'Air (from History of aviation)
Image 6Cathay Pacific's first class cabin on board a Boeing 747-400 (from Wide-body aircraft)
Image 7Qantas De Havilland biplane, c. 1930 (from History of aviation)
Image 8"Governable parachute" design of 1852 (from History of aviation)
Image 9Alberto Santos-Dumont flying the Demoiselle over Paris (from History of aviation)
Image 10German Taube monoplane, illustration from 1917 (from History of aviation)
Image 11Woodcut print of a kite from John Bate's 1635 book The Mysteryes of Nature and Art (from History of aviation)
Image 12Experimental helicopter by Enrico Forlanini (1877), exposed at the Museo nazionale della scienza e della tecnologia Leonardo da Vinci of Milan, Italy (from History of aviation)
Image 13The Wright Flyer: the first sustained flight with a powered, controlled aircraft (from History of aviation)
Image 14Flagg biplane from 1933 (from History of aviation)
Image 151843 artist's impression of John Stringfellow's plane Ariel flying over the Nile (from History of aviation)
Image 16Félix du Temple's 1874 Monoplane (from History of aviation)
Image 17Nieuport IV, operated by most of the world's air forces before WW1 for reconnaissance and bombing, including during the Italian-Turkish war (from History of aviation)
Image 18Otto Lilienthal, 29 May 1895 (from History of aviation)
Image 19One of Leonardo's sketches (from History of aviation)
Image 20Jean-Marie Le Bris and his flying machine, Albatros II, 1868 (from History of aviation)
Image 21Apollo 11 lifts off on its mission to land a man on the Moon (from History of aviation)
Image 22Robinson R22, a light piston-engine helicopter (from General aviation)
Image 23Cessna CitationJet/M2, part of the Citation family of business jets (from General aviation)
Image 24The business class cabin on an A350 (from Wide-body aircraft)
Image 25Me 262, world first operational jet fighter (from History of aviation)
Image 26Leonardo da Vinci's ornithopter design (from History of aviation)
Image 27Maxim's flying machine (from History of aviation)
Image 28Map of record breaking flights of the 1920s (from History of aviation)
Image 29General aviation aircraft at Cheb Airfield in Czech Republic (from General aviation)
Image 30French reconnaissance balloon L'Intrépide of 1796, the oldest existing flying device, in the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum, Vienna (from History of aviation)
Image 31Sailplane, a Rolladen-Schneider LS4 (from General aviation)
Image 32The 14-bis, or Oiseau de proie (from History of aviation)
Image 33Daedalus working on Icarus' wings (from History of aviation)
Image 34First failure of Langley's manned Aerodrome on the Potomac River, 7 October 1903 (from History of aviation)
Image 35A Boeing 787 Dreamliner of United Airlines landing at Beijing Capital International Airport in December 2018. (from Wide-body aircraft)
Image 36First female combat pilot, Sabiha Gökçen, reviews her Breguet 19 (from History of aviation)
Image 37Planophore model aeroplane by Alphonse Pénaud, 1871 (from History of aviation)
Image 381928 issue of Popular Aviation (now Flying magazine), which became the largest aviation magazine with a circulation of 100,000. (from History of aviation)
Image 39Clément Ader Avion III (1897 photograph) (from History of aviation)
Image 40"Map of Air Routes and Landing Places in Great Britain, as temporarily arranged by the Air Ministry for civilian flying", published in 1919, showing Hounslow, near London, as the hub (from History of aviation)
Image 41Early Voisin biplane (from History of aviation)
Image 42La France flying in 1885 (from History of aviation)
Image 43The Aeroplane of Victor Tatin, 1879. (from History of aviation)
Image 44Concorde, G-BOAB, in storage at London Heathrow Airport following the end of all Concorde flying. This aircraft flew for 22,296 hours between its first flight in 1976 and final flight in 2000 (from History of aviation)

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Selected biography

Neil Armstrong (born August 5, 1930) is a former American astronaut, test pilot, university professor, and United States Naval Aviator. He was the first person to set foot on the Moon. His first spaceflight was aboard Gemini 8 in 1966, for which he was the command pilot. On this mission, he performed the first manned docking of two spacecraft together with pilot David Scott. Armstrong's second and last spaceflight was as mission commander of the Apollo 11 moon landing mission on July 20, 1969. On this mission, Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the lunar surface and spent 2.5 hours exploring while Michael Collins orbited. Armstrong is a recipient of the Congressional Space Medal of Honor.

Before becoming an astronaut, Armstrong was in the United States Navy and saw action in the Korean War. After the war, he served as a test pilot at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) High-Speed Flight Station, now known as the Dryden Flight Research Center, where he flew over 900 flights in a variety of aircraft. As a research pilot, Armstrong served as project pilot on the F-100 Super Sabre A and C aircraft, F-101 Voodoo, and the Lockheed F-104A Starfighter. He also flew the Bell X-1B, Bell X-5, North American X-15, F-105 Thunderchief, F-106 Delta Dart, B-47 Stratojet, KC-135 Stratotanker and Paresev. He graduated from Purdue University.

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The Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow was a delta-winged interceptor aircraft, designed and built by Avro Aircraft Limited (Canada) in Malton, Ontario, Canada, as the culmination of a design study that began in 1953. Considered to be both an advanced technical and aerodynamic achievement for the Canadian aviation industry, the CF-105 held the promise of Mach 2 speeds at altitudes exceeding 50,000 ft (15,000 m), and was intended to serve as the Royal Canadian Air Force's primary interceptor in the 1960s and beyond. Not long after the 1958 start of its flight test program, the development of the Arrow (including its Orenda Iroquois jet engines) was abruptly and controversially halted before the project review had taken place, sparking a long and bitter political debate. The controversy engendered by the cancellation and subsequent destruction of the aircraft in production, remains a topic for debate among historians, political observers and industry pundits. "This action effectively put Avro out of business and its highly skilled engineering and production personnel scattered... The incident was a traumatic one... and to this day, many mourn the loss of the Arrow."

Span: 50 ft 0 in (15.24 m)
Length: 77 ft 9 in (23.71 m)
Height: 20 ft 6 in (6.25 m)
Engines: 2×Pratt & Whitney J75-P-3
Cruising Speed: Mach 0.91 (607 mph, 977 km/h) at 36,000 ft (11,000 m)
First Flight: 25 March 1958
Number built: 5

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