June 2004 - Issue 6

Navigate the whole feature below

The History of Commercial Aviation

Commercial Aviation Timeline

17 December 1903

The Wright Brothers make history as the first to fly a powered aircraft. With Orville Wright at the controls, the Wright Flyer stays aloft for 12 seconds, covering a distance of 120 feet. Three more flights take place at Kitty Hawk that day, the longest lasting 59 seconds and covering 852 feet.

17 October 1903

Brazilian-born Alberto Santos-Dumont makes the first successful European airplane flight. His plane, the 14bis, flies a distance of about 200 feet in Paris. With many skeptical of the Wright Brothers' flights, Santos-Dumont is hailed at the time as the first to fly.

23 October 1903

In a field near Paris, Henry Farman becomes the first to officially fly a one-kilometer circular course, the world‘s longest distance at the time. Farman’s plane was created by pioneering French aircraft designers Gabriel and Charles Voisin.

17 October 1903

Piloting his plane, the June Bug, Glenn Curtiss wins a silver trophy and national acclaim for becoming the first American to officially fly a distance over one kilometer. Of course, Wilbur Wright had already flown more than 24 miles three years earlier, but his flight over an Ohio farm was not witnessed.

23 october 2003

The Wright Brothers begin a series of flying demonstrations in France. Far superior to European planes which could only stay aloft for only a minute or two, the Wright Flyer in one demonstration circled an airfield 77 times for two and a half hours.

17 october 1903

Army Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge, a member of Alexander Graham Bell's Aerial Experiment Association, becomes the first person ever killed from an airplane crash. Selfridge was a passenger of Orville Wright's when one of the propellers cracked at 150 feet in the air, sending the biplane nose first into the ground.

23 october 2003

After several failed attempts, French aviator Louis Blériot becomes the first to fly across the English Channel. Flying his Blériot XI, he covers the 23-mile distance in 37 minutes.

Next decade: 1910-1919