You are at netAirspace : On This Day : February 18

<
>
On This Day: February 18

Aviation events for February 18

1832: Octave Chanute (1832-1910), first great historian of aviation, is born in Paris, France. Brought to the US when young, Chanute was a civilian engineer before turning to aviation. In 1894 he published Progress in Flying Machines. The book became a bible for the Wright brothers.
 
1911: First official government air mail flight is made in India as French pilot Henri Pequet flies 6,500 letters a distance of about five miles (8 km).
 
1934: TWA assembles a team to fly a prototype of the DC-1 from Burbank, California, to Newark, New Jersey, in a record-breaking 13 hours and 4 minutes.
 
1963: Air Force authorizes the initial construction of the first six SR-71s. These aircraft were designated R-12s. The project code name was SENIOR CROWN.
 
1969: Hawthorne Nevada Airlines Flight 708 crashes into Mount Whitney, killing all 35 on-board. The pilots of the DC-3 (N17750) were straying from their filed VFR flight plan when they struck. Weather and challenging terrain prevented rescue crews to come upon the wreckage until the following August.
 
1969: Terrorists attack an El Al 707 on the runway at Zurich, killing a pilot and three passengers.
 
1973: Daniel Bouchart and Didier Potelle land 19,568 feet up on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, Tanzania in an SA 319 B Alouette II helicopter.
 
1974: NASA launches Italian satellite San Marcos C-2 (235/843 km).
 
1977: The converted Boeing 747 space shuttle carrier makes its first flight with the shuttle Enterprise on its back, at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center.
 
1979: NASA launches space vehicle S-202.
 
1981: Aircraft industrialist Jack Northrop, co-founder of Lockheed Corporation and, later, founder of Northrop Corporation, dies at the age of 85.
 
1988: Binter Canarias is founded.
 
2009: N652UA, a Boeing 767-322ER operated by United Airlines, is damaged significantly by the automatic discharge of a sprinkler system in the hangar it is parked in while undergoing maintenance at O'Hare International Airport, Chicago. Eleven cabin windows are knocked out by the force of the discharge, damaging the aircraft's avionics systems.
 
 
 

Explore by day

Jump to
 
 

Explore by year

Jump to year
 
 

LEFT

RIGHT
CONTENT