2010 – JetBlue flight attendant incident was an altercation that occurred after JetBlue Airways Flight 1052, a flight from Pittsburgh to New York City, had landed. The incident garnered significant media attention when, upon landing, Steven Slater, a flight attendant, announced over the plane’s public address system that he had been called an obscenity by a passenger, quit his job, deployed the evacuation slide at the terminal gate, and slid down it. Slater claimed to have been injured by a passenger when he instructed her to sit down. Slater’s account of the event was not corroborated by others.
2007 – Air Moorea Flight 1121, operated on an Air Moorea de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter airplane, crashed shortly after taking off from Temae Airport on Moorea island in French Polynesia; the plane was bound for Tahiti. According to the official report by Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses pour la sécurité de l’Aviation Civile, all 20 occupants, including 19 passengers and one crew member, died.
2006 – Transatlantic aircraft plot was a terrorist plot to detonate liquid explosives carried on board at least 10 airliners travelling from the United Kingdom to the United States and Canada. The plot was discovered and foiled by British police before it could be carried out and, as a result, unprecedented security measures were immediately put in place.
1996 – Sir Frank Whittle, inventor of the jet engine, dies at 89.
1995 – Aviateca Flight 901, a Boeing 737, crashes into San Vicente volcano while on approach to Cuscatlán International Airport; all 65 on board die.
1980 – Jacqueline Cochrane, US pilot / first female to fly faster than sound, dies at 70.
1976 – USSR launches Luna 24, last Lunar flight to date from Earth.
1976 – Sikorsky YUH-60A UTTAS, 73-21650, first prototype to fly, fully loaded with 14 Army personnel during testing, makes emergency landing at 2315 hrs. in a wooded area of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, due to vibration caused by outer skin of a main rotor blade coming loose. Due to heavy mist, pilot CW2 Charlie Lovell believes he is landing in a cornfield but instead comes down in a pine forest. Main rotor scythes down 40 pines, some as large as five inches in diameter, as it lands, but main rotor blades do not shatter. Only injury is to a soldier who bumps his head against a truncated pine as he egresses the helicopter. After cutting down stumps around the aircraft, and replacing the main and tail rotors, the now-nicknamed "Phoenix" is flown out of the site three days later. US Army, duly impressed by the crash survivability shown, will award the UTTAS contract to Sikorsky and the design will be named the Blackhawk. This airframe will be destroyed in a crash on 19 May 1978.
1974 – A Buffalo of 116 ATU was shot down by a Syrian Missile while on a routine flight between Beirut and Damascus. The flight was commanded by Capt. Gary Foster of Comox. Nine Canadians lost their lives.
1974 – RAF McDonnell Douglas/Hawker Siddeley F-4M Phantom FGR.2, XV493, 'F', of No. 41 Squadron was involved in fatal mid-air collision with a Piper Pawnee crop-sprayer, G-ASVK, over Fordham Fen near Downham Market, Norfolk, England. Two Phantom and one Pawnee crew all KWF.
1970 – LANSA Flight 502, a Lockheed L-188 Electra turboprop, crashes and burns shortly after takeoff from Cuzco, Peru, killing 99 people on the plane and two on the ground; among the dead are 49 U.S. high school exchange students.
1967 – The world’s first radar-equipped antsubmarine helicopter enters service, a Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm Westland Wessex HAS.3 with No. 814 Squadron.
1961 – The Holtaheia Accident: An Eagle Airways Vickers VC.1 Viking crashes at Holta, Strand, Norway, killing all 39 on board, including 36 people from the Archbishop Lanfranc School.
1950 – The first Canadian built Sabre Mark 1 flew.
1950 – Al Lily became the first Canadian to break the Sound Barrier.
1949 – US Navy pilot Lt. J. L. "Pappy" Fruin of VF-101 loses control of his McDonnell F2H-1 Banshee at 500 mph and 30,000 feet and ejects over Walterboro, South Carolina, becoming the first American Naval aviator to use an ejector seat during an actual in-flight emergency. VF-101 was the first Navy unit to receive the type.
1949 – The first Canadian passenger jet (second in the world after the British), the Avro Canada Jetliner, is flown at Malton. Despite its advanced design, it never saw production and was later sold for scrap.
1945 – Carrier aircraft of Task Force 38 conduct devastating strikes against Japanese airfields in northern Honshu where the Japanese had been marshalling aircraft for a planned major suicide strike on B-29 bases in the Mariana Islands. The Americans claim 251 Japanese aircraft destroyed and 141 damaged.
1942 – The P-38 Lightning fighter scores its first aerial victories when two P-38 s of the 343rd Fighter Group flown by U. S. Army Air Forces Lieutenants K. Ambrose and S. A. Long shoot down two Japanese Kawanishi H6 K4 flying boats near the Aleutian Islands.
1941 – Flying a Dornier Do 215 B-5 night fighter, Luftwaffe Oberleutnant Ludwig Becker achieves Germany’s first aerial victory employing airborne radar, using a Lichtenstein radar to detect and close with a British Vickers Wellington bomber participating in a raid on Hamburg, Germany, before shooting down the Wellington.
1936 – Six aircraft support a Republican seizure of Ibiza.
1918 – Eight Italian Ansaldo SVA biplanes of the 87 Squadriglia “Serenimissa”, led by Gabriele D’Annunzio, fly over Vienna for 30 min taking photographs and dropping leaflets before returning to base without loss.
1896 – Otto Lilienthal crashes during a routine flight in the hills of Stölln and dies next day because of a spinal injury.
1884 – The first fully controllable free-flight is made in a French Army dirigible La France by Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs. The electric-powered flight covers 8 km (5 miles) in 23 min. It was the first full circle flight with landing on the starting point.
