Milestones in aviation

Around 1490

Leonardo da Vinci envisions and sketches flying machines such as helicopters.

1809

September: Sir George Cayley published his seminal paper On Aerial Navigation, setting out for the first time the scientific principles of heavier-than-air flight.

1853

Late June or early July: Sir George Cayley's coachman became the world's first aeroplane pilot, flying a glider designed by his employer for 423ft (130m) across a valley in Brompton, Yorkshire.

1890s

Otto Lilienthal: first controlled glider flights. Often called the first pilot. Breaks his spine on the 2500th flight.
Samuel Pierpont Langley flies the heavier-than-air powered unmanned aircraft Aerodrome.

1890

Clement Ader: first powered heavier-than-air flight (but uncontrolled).

1894

November: Lawrence Hargrave demonstrates stable flight with a tethered box kite.
Octave Chanute publishes his book Progress in Flying Machines, the first history of aviation and highly influential on many early pioneers, including the Wright Brothers.

1899

Percy Pilcher flies various gliders and is close to completing a powered machine when he is tragically killed.

1903

March 31 : Richard Pearse reputed to have made an uncontrolled powered flight in a heavier-than-air craft, a monoplane of his own construction, that crash lands on a hedge. (This date is computed from circumstantial evidence of eyewitnesses as the flight was not well-documented at the time.)
August: Karl Jatho flies up to 200 feet in a powered heavier-than-air craft
December: After years of dedicated research and development, the brothers Orville and Wilbur Wright fly 300 yards in a more practical aeroplane. This is the first photographed powered heavier-than-air flight.

1906

March: Traian Vuia: first fully self-powered flight (Wright brothers needed headwinds or catapults).
October: Alberto Santos-Dumont: first official flight.

1907

Paul Cornu: first helicopter flight (just a hop though)

1908

May: First ever passenger carrying flight - Wilbur Wright flew Charles W. Furnas for a distance of 2.5 miles in a Wright Model B.

1909

July: Louis Bl�riot flew the English Channel.
August: The first international aviation meeting is held at Reims in France.

1910

October: Romanian inventor Henri Coanda (1886-1972), constructed the first jet engine in the world, named the Coanda-1910, exhibited at the International Aeronautical Show in Paris and tested near Paris.

1911

First coast-to-coast airplane flight across the USA by the Vin Fiz Flyer - taking 49 days, with several crashes en-route.
July: First ever commercial cargo to be carried by an aircraft, a case of electric lamps, from Shoreham to Hove in England.
October: First aircraft to be used in war was a Bleriot monoplane flown from Tripoli to Azizia to spy on Turkish positions.

1912

First all-metal aircraft flies, the Tubavion monoplane built by Ponche and Primard in France.
September: First airman to be killed in miltary service - 2nd Lieutenant E. Hotchkiss of the Royal Flying Corps - due to structural failure of the aircraft, a Bristol monoplane.

1918

Planes at war: Manfred von Richthofen, called the "Red Baron" and "ace of aces", claims 80th victory, and finally is shot down

1919

May: A US Navy flying boat NC-4 flew by short stages from Long Island, New York to Lisbon, Portugal over 19 days.
June: John Alcock and Arthur Brown completed the first non-stop Atlantic crossing, flying a Vickers Vimy from Newfoundland to Ireland in 16 hours.
November: Keith and Ross Smith fly another Vickers Vimy, G-EAOU, from England to Australia, the first flight between these two places.

1923

May: The first non-stop USA coast-to-coast flight.

1927

May 20-May 21: Charles Lindbergh flew the Atlantic nonstop and solo, direct from New York City to Paris.

1928

May: Charles Kingsford-Smith, Ulm, Lyon and Warner flew the Southern Cross, a modified Fokker Trimotor from San Francisco to Brisbane - the first crossing of the Pacific Ocean by air.
June: First rocket-powered plane, the Ente.

1936

Focke Fa 61: first practical helicopter by Henrich Focke (Germany)

1937

Sir Frank Whittle builds the first jet engine designed to power an aircraft.

1939

Heinkel He 176 and He 178: first planes to be powered by liquid-fulled rocket and by turbojet respectively. Both private ventures by Ernst Heinkel and test-flown by Erich Warsitz. The rocket used was developed by Hellmuth Walter and the turbojet by Hans von Ohain.

1942

Messerschmitt Me 262: first jet fighter, test-piloted by Fritz Wendel. Mass production started in 1944, too late for a decisive impact.

1947

October: Chuck Yeager took the rocket-powered Bell X-1 past the speed of sound.

1948

July 14: Six de Havilland Vampire F3s of RAF No 54 Squadron, commanded by Wg Cdr D S Wilson-MacDonald, DSO, DFC, became the first jet aircraft to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. They went via Stornoway, Iceland and Labrador to Montreal on the first leg of a goodwill tour of Canada and the US where they gave several formation aerobatic displays.

1952

The British state airline BOAC introduced into service the first jet airliner the De Havilland Comet.

1961

First space flight by Yuri Gagarin, once around the planet within 108 minutes.

1967

Air speed record of 4,534 mph (Mach 6.1) is established by the North American X-15 research aircraft.

1969

Boeing 747 is unveiled. At the time the largest passenger carrying aircraft ever built and one which was to revolutionise commercial air travel.
July: Neil Armstrong is the first man to walk on the moon.

1974

September: A SR-71 Blackbird crossed the Atlantic Ocean in less than two hours.

1976

British Airways starts the first supersonic airliner service with the introduction of the Concorde.

1977

August: Gossamer Condor became the first human-powered aeroplane, flying a figure-8 course to demonstrate sustained, controlled flight.

1986

December: First non-stop flight around the planet without refueling.

2003

October: First totally autonomous flight across the Atlantic by a computer-controlled model aircraft.
December: First centenary of powered flight.

See also: Aviation history