January 8: Turkish Airlines Flight 634, an Avro RJ100 (registered TC-THG) crashes on approach near Diyarbakir Airport in Turkey. The approach was being shot in heavy fog, and there were only 5 survivors among the 80 people aboard.
January 8: Air Midwest Flight 5481 crashes on departure from Charlotte-Douglas International Airport, killing all 21 on-board. Operating for US Airways, the Beechcraft 1900D (registered N233YV) had received faulty maintenance on the elevator cables, resulting in the inability of the flight crew to control the aircraft, leading to a stall.
January 23: The final communication is made between Earth and Pioneer 10, a spacecraft intended to fly past Jupiter. It was launched in 1972, and its last trajectory would have the craft the first artificial object to leave the solar system.
February 1: Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrates over Texas during its descent to earth on mission STS-107, killing all seven astronauts on board. Heat shield tiles, which suffered damage during the shuttle’s launch, fail during reentry, allowing hot gases to enter the left wing and eventually cause it to break off, quickly leading to the destruction of the entire spacecraft.
March 6: Hooters Air begins service, operated by Pace Airlines. The business would last less than three years.
March 6: Air Algerie Flight 6239 crashes on takeoff from Tamanrasset, Algeria, killing all but one of the 103 on-board. The Boeing 737-200 (7T-VEZ) suffers a contained engine failure on rotation and is unable to maintain altitude, coming back to Earth a few thousand feet beyond the runway….
May 4: Frontier Airlines increases service to Atlanta, Dallas/Fort Worth, Los Angeles, Portland, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle. Their regional operation Frontier JetExpress also adds regional jet service to Boise, Oklahoma City and Tucson, while discontinuing service to Oakland.
May 20: First flight of SpaceShipOne (first captive flight, unmanned).
May 25: Boeing 727 tail number N844AA mysteriously disappears in Angola, along with Ben Charles Padilla.
May 30: The final commercial flight of an Air France Concorde takes place.
July 28: First flight of the Adam A700 AdamJet.
July 29: The International Space Station’s 1,000th consecutive day of astronauts living on board.
September 14: USAF Thunderbirds #6 solo crashes into the tarmac at Mountain Home AFB, Idaho, while attempting its initial maneuver at the Gunfighter Skies 2003 air show. The pilot safely ejected just moments before impact. Pilot error (insufficient altitude) is determined as the cause and the pilot is reassigned to the Pentagon. Although the desert terrain is similar, the ground elevation at Mountain Home AFB is over 1000 feet higher than the Thunderbirds' home base at Nellis AFB.
September 22: David Hempleman-Adams becomes the first person to cross the Atlantic Ocean in an open-air, wicker-basket hot air balloon from New Brunswick, Canada to Ireland.
September 30: Air France and KLM announce their plans to merge.
October 15: Yang Liwei becomes the People's Republic of China's first man in space.
October 24: Concorde makes its last scheduled commercial flight with British Airways.
November 8: Kam Air commences flight operations out of Kabul International Airport.
November 12: First commercial flight for Etihad Airways.
November 22: The DHL A300 shootdown incident in Baghdad.
November 26: Concorde makes its final flight over Bristol
December 17: On the anniversary of the Wright Flyer's achievement, SpaceShipOne is the first privately built, manned aircraft to fly faster than the speed of sound.
