Aviation history

Horatio Phillips, a fellow member of the Aeronautical Society, developed an even more effective wind tunnel design, and he patented (1884) a two-surface, cambered-airfoil design that provided the foundation for most subsequent work in the field.

That information culminated in the Wright glider of 1902, a breakthrough machine whose wing design enabled the Wright brothers to take the final steps to the invention of the airplane.

On December 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright capped four years of research and design efforts with a 120-foot, 12-second flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina - the first powered flight in a heavier-than-air machine.

In 1905, members of the Automobile Club of America, itself only six years old, founded the Aero Club of America, with the goal of promoting the new sport and industry of aviation in the United States.

The first person to fly as a passenger was Leon Delagrange, who rode with French pilot Henri Farman from a meadow outside of Paris in 1908.

The first scheduled air service began in Florida on January 1, 1914.

By 1917, the United States government felt enough progress had been made in the development of planes to warrant something totally new - the transport of mail by air.

The first flight left Belmont Park, Long Island for Philadelphia on May 14, 1918 and the next day continued on to Washington, where it was met by President Woodrow Wilson.

The Post Office took over the operation of the guidance system the following year, and by the end of 1923, constructed similar beacons between Chicago and Cheyenne, Wyoming, a line later extended coast-to-coast at a cost of $550,000.

Henry Ford, the automobile manufacturer, was also among the early successful bidders for airmail contracts, winning the right, in 1925, to carry mail from Chicago to Detroit and Cleveland aboard planes his company already was using to transport spare parts for his automobile assembly plants.

Congress adopted the recommendations of the Morrow Board almost to the letter in the Air Commerce Act of 1926.

Juan Trippe, one of the original partners in Colonial, later pioneered international air travel with Pan Am - a carrier he founded in 1927 to transport mail between Key West, Florida, and Havana, Cuba.

Within the aviation industry, Delta Air Lines is a legacy carrier airline, which has been offering passenger services since 1929.

In 1930, Postmaster General Walter Brown pushed for legislation that would have another major impact on the development of commercial aviation.

Offering passenger flights since 1931, United Airlines has a fleet of around 800 aircraft and serves more than 300 destinations.

Following the Democratic landslide in the election of 1932, some of the smaller airlines began complaining to news reporters and politicians that they had been unfairly denied airmail contracts by Brown.

Its cabin was insulated, to reduce engine noise levels inside the plane, and it featured such amenities as upholstered seats and a hot water heater to make flying more comfortable to passengers. It was unveiled in 1933, and United Air Lines promptly bought 60 of them.

Congressional hearings followed, chaired by Senator Hugo Black of Alabama, and by 1934 the scandal had reached such proportions as to prompt President Franklin Roosevelt to cancel all mail contracts and turn mail deliveries over to the Army.

The first air traffic control tower was established in 1935 at what is now Newark International Airport in New Jersey

Widely recognised as the world’s largest airline, not only in terms of revenue passenger-kilometres, but also in terms of fleet size and total passengers carried, American Airlines has been offering passenger services since 1936.

Government decisions continued to prove as important to aviation's future as technological breakthroughs, and one of the most important aviation bills ever enacted by Congress was the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938.

In 1940, however, President Roosevelt convinced Congress to transfer the accident investigation function to the CAA, which was then renamed the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB). These moves, coupled with the tremendous progress made on the technological side, put the industry on the road to success.

When first flown on June 27, 1941, the Douglas Aircraft Company’s creation was not only the largest bomber in the world, it was also the the largest airplane ever built.

EVERYTHING SEEMED TO TILT IN THE LUFTWAFFE’S FAVOR ON JULY 5, 1943, THE OPENING DAY OF WORLD WAR II’S BATTLE OF KURSK. The German pilots in their Messerschmitt Me-109s and Focke-Wulf Fw-190s had a field day against their Soviet adversaries and their inferior Yakovlev fighters.

Fred and Harold Panton created the Lincolnshire Aviation Heritage Centre in East Kirby, Lincolnshire, to honor the memory of their brother Christopher, who died in an Avro Lancaster bomber during a raid over Nuremberg in 1944.

Built in April 1945 by Austin Motors in Birmingham, the Lancaster, tail number NX611, was intended for service in the Far East, but the British eventually sold it to the Aéronautique navale (French naval aviation) instead.

When he reached Berlin in 1948, he saw a city that Allied bombers had transformed into a “moonscape.” In the new…

The British Overseas Aircraft Corporation introduced the first commercial jet service in 1952.

FIREBOMBERS! FLYING ON THE EDGE TO FIGHT FIRES Since 1955, when pilots of the Willows Flying Service first cut a hole in a Stearman and dropped 170 gallons of water onto a California forest fire, a wide variety of aircraft have been converted to fight Western wildfires.

On June 30, 1956, a Trans World Airlines Super Constellation and a United Air Lines DC-7 collided over the Grand Canyon, Arizona, killing all 128 occupants of the two airplanes.

Two months later, on August 23, 1958, the President signed the Federal Aviation Act, which transferred the Civil Aeronautics Authority's functions to a new independent Federal Aviation Agency responsible for civil aviation safety.

In 1961, for example, the first series of aircraft hijackings in the United States occurred.

In March 1962, Attorney General Robert Kennedy swore in FAA's first "peace officers," as special United States deputy marshals.

The legislation created a new safety regulatory agency, the Federal Aviation Agency, later called the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) when Congress created the Department of Transportation (DOT) in 1967.

In January 1968, New York controllers formed an employee organization, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization, or PATCO. Within six months, PATCO had a national membership of over 5,000 controllers.

1969 marked the debut of another revolutionary aircraft, the Boeing 747, which, again, Pan Am was the first to purchase and fly in commercial service.

Opened in April 1970, the new facility collected and correlated systemwide air traffic and weather data, detected potential trouble spots, and suggested solutions.

Southwest Airlines is a low-cost airline within the aviation sector, which has been offering passenger services since 1971.

In February 1972, the National Association of Air Traffic Specialists (NAATS) became the exclusive representative for all flight service station specialists, those controllers who supported general aviation pilots.

Weintraub focuses on the first six women Navy pilots, beginning with their training in 1973.

The Airline Deregulation Act, signed on October 24, 1978, created a highly competitive airline industry.

The labor contract between FAA and PATCO expired in March 1981.

In January 1982, FAA publicly released the first annual National Airspace System (NAS) Plan, a comprehensive 20-year blueprint for a state-of-the-art traffic control and air navigation system to accommodate projected growth in air travel.

FAA and PASS concluded their first national labor agreement during fiscal year 1984.

Based in Dublin, Ireland, Ryanair is a low-cost airline within the aviation sector, which has been offering commercial flights since 1985.

In the aftermath of the strike, PATCO disbanded and the controllers remained without a union until June 19, 1987, when the National Air Traffic Controllers Association became the exclusive representative of terminal and center controllers.

China Southern Airlines has its headquarters in the city of Guangzhou and has been offering passenger services since 1988.

In February 1991, FAA replaced the NAS Plan with the more comprehensive Capital Investment Plan.

In June 1998, FAA began testing a new compensation plan called core compensation, which replaced the traditional grade and step base pay method with a structure of pay bands, the value of which were determined by comparison with similar jobs in government and private industry.

On April 23, 2000, FAA transferred approximately 6,500 employees into the core compensation system.

In June 2003, FAA selected its first ATO Chief Operating Officer (COO), Russell Chew.

The ATO officially began operations on February 8, 2004.

In line with other agency efforts to improve efficiency, in December 2005, the COO restructured ATO administrative and support functions in the field.

In June 2006, he instituted a new ATO Service Center structure.

With the ATO structure in place, the agency's first COO resigned from FAA on February 23, 2007.

In 2008, the ATO consolidated the service units and staff offices into four business units, each led by a senior vice president.

WERE IT NOT FOR THE EFFORTS OF TWO MEN WHO SETTLED IN THE TOWN OF WILLOWS, CALIFORNIA, THE AUGUST COMPLEX FIRE, THE LARGEST IN THE STATE’S HISTORY, MIGHT HAVE DEVASTED EVEN MORE THAN THE MILLION ACRES IT RAVAGED DURING THE SEEMINGLY ENDLESS FIRE SEASON OF 2020.