1926: The first airplane flight over the North Pole is made by Americans Lt. Cdr. Richard E. Byrd and Floyd Bennett in a Fokker F-VII/3m. Their total distance from Spitzbergen, Norway is 1,600 miles (2,575 km).

1932: U.S. Army Air Corps Captain A. F. Hegenberger has become the first pilot in the world to make a “blind” landing using instruments alone, with no back-up co-pilot on board in Dayton, Ohio.

1936: The German airship Hindenburg lands at Lakehurst, New Jersey after its first scheduled transatlantic flight.

1961: Senator Robert S. Kerr, chairman of the Senate Aeronautical and Space Sciences Committee, told a group at the National Radio and Television Convention that President Kennedy accepted the views of NASA and congressional leaders in approving the manned Mercury-Redstone flight of May 5.

1962: First flight of the Sikorsky CH-54 Tahre (SkyCrane).

1983: The first all-woman flight crew to fly a round trip across the Atlantic is the Air France C-141 crew form the 18th Military Airlift Squadron, McGuire Air Force Base, New Jersey.

2004: Southwest Airlines begins service to Philadelphia International Airport.

2005: Kingfisher Airlines commences operations at Bengaluru International Airport.

2012: A Sukhoi SSJ-100 crashes in Indonesia with 44 people on board.

2015: On 9 May 2015, an Airbus A400M Atlas cargo plane on a test flight crashed at La Rinconada, less than 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) from Seville Airport at around 1pm local timeOn 9 May 2015, an Airbus A400M Atlas cargo plane on a test flight crashed at La Rinconada, less than 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) from Seville Airport at around 1pm local time. The aircraft, serial number MSN023, was on its pre-delivery test flight and was scheduled to be the third A400M to be delivered to the Turkish Air Force. The six aircraft crew were Spanish employees of Airbus Defence and Space, four of them were killed and two were seriously injured. Read more...