A Canadian CT-114 Tutor after the Snowbirds performed at the 2009 Jones Beach Air Show in New York. (Photo by John Klos)
2005 – Sosoliso Airlines Flight 1145, a DC-9 registered YU-AJH, crashes at Port Harcourt International Airport in Nigeria, killing 108 of 110 people on-board. The aircraft overshot the runway while attempting to land during a thunderstorm, and might have been struck by lightning around 125 ft up. Among the dead were 61 junior high school students.
2004 – Two Canadian Snowbirds aerobatic CT-114 Tutors collide near Mossbank, Saskatchewan during training, killing one of the pilots. In a sad coincidence, this is six years to the date of the team’s previous fatal accident (scroll down).
2004 – The US Federal Aviation Administration issues an Emergency Airworthiness Directive effectively grounding all U.S. Beechcraft T-34 Mentor aircraft. The directive is in response to fatal in-flight structural failure accidents during simulated aerial combat flights.
1998 – Two Canadian Snowbird CT-114 Tutors collide during training near Moosejaw, Saskatchewan, killing one of the pilots.
1974 – The Helios 1 spacecraft is launched by the US and Germany, later to make the closest flyby of the Sun.
1958 – National Airlines operates the very first domestic jet service in the United States, flying a Boeing 707 from Miami to New York’s Idlewild (now JFK).
1941 – Colin Kelly, pilot of a U.S. Army Air Corps B-17 Flying Fortress, is killed in one of the first bombing runs against the Japanese forces after their attacks on Pearl Harbor and Manila. Kelly is remembered as one of the America’s first heroes of World War II, remaining behind the controls of his badly damaged B-17C (40-2045) long enough for all his crewmates to bail out. Everyone parachuted to safety except Kelly. A San Francisco street was renamed in his honor in 1942. Its former name: Japan Street.
1909 – Two men become the first Austalians to fly from Great Britain to Australia direct. Cruising along as an average speed of 83 mph, it only took them 135 hours for the 11,340-mile trip.
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