Earlier this year, a Norwegian Air Boeing 787 Dreamliner hitched a ride on a powerful jet stream and flew from New York to London in a record-setting five hours and 13 minutes, landing almost an hour ahead of schedule. Record-setting, perhaps, but for a subsonic airliner. In 1976 -- over 40 years ago -- elite passengers were crossing the Atlantic in under three and a half hours, flying at twice the speed of sound in the Anglo-French Concorde.
There was a time when smartphones weren’t smart, and you still dialed a call. Connectivity meant that you knew how to hook up a turntable and a cassette deck to the stereo, and bandwidth was the size of the elastic in your sweat pants. Then, in the 1980s, personal computers and mobile cellular phones disrupted the tech landscape, and airline passengers started seeing Airfone handsets in the cabin.
The sun is setting on the planet's most recognizable jetliner. The very last Boeing 747 passenger jet was likely delivered in July -- a jumbo for Korean Air Lines -- and on November 7, 2017 United Airlines is retiring its Boeing 747 fleet with a retro-themed farewell flight from San Francisco to Honolulu.
Aircraft manufacturers have produced some magnificent planes throughout aviation's history, and while many have ruled the skies, some have barely left the ground. In fact, there have been a number of fascinating aviation projects that were canceled for political, financial and technical reasons. On some occasions, designers just came up against the inexorable march of technological advancement, having built the wrong plane for the times.
The history of aviation is littered with aircraft concepts and prototypes that promised to bring point-to-point passenger services to the traveling public. The idea of replacing massive and remote airports with a rooftop or downtown landing pad was, to say the least, inviting. The 1950s were a time of enthusiastic aerospace development and innovation, and one odd-looking aircraft of the era was the Fairey Aviation Company’s Rotodyne. It was designed to meet a short-haul vertical-lift requirement of British European Airways (BEA), an ancestor of today’s British Airways.
A sell-out crowd celebrated the 2017 inductees to Canada’s Aviation Hall of Fame (CAHF) during a gala event at Vancouver International Airport on June 15. Skies was on hand as over 430 people gathered for the 44th annual event. Host Denis Chagnon welcomed the crowd and introduced the four inductees–Erroll Boyd, Robert “Bob” Deluce, Danny Sitnam, and Rogers Eben Smith–each of whom has made significant contributions to Canadian aviation.
The iconic Jeppesen approach charts are filled with the information pilots need to complete a safe approach and landing. The format of the charts has also inspired a series of more than 80 commemorative maps recognizing Jeppesen employees, and honoring pilots such as Jimmy Buffet and Harrison Ford, and events such as Apollo 13 and the Miracle on the Hudson. In 2013, Jeppesen added Santa Claus to the list of honorees with the release of its North Pole Village chart.
The recent release of Sully sheds light on the major accomplishment of the crew of US Airways Flight 1549 on January 15, 2009. But Clint Eastwood wasn’t the first to honor the “Miracle on the Hudson.” Navigation solutions company Jeppesen captured the event on a commemorative chart – its most popular to date.
Brien Wygle could easily be included in a conversation about celebrated Canadian test pilots, such as de Havilland Canada’s Russ Bannock, Avro’s Mike Cooper-Slipper, and Canadair’s Al Lilly. But Wygle isn’t well known to Canadian aviation historians, thanks to a twist of fate that led him across the border to a long and distinguished career with Boeing.
It’s been 44 years since the first 747-100 was delivered to Air Canada, in February 1971. That was barely a year after the industry-changing wide-body aircraft entered service with launch airline Pan American Airways, and just two years after the 747’s first flight. In Canada, different versions of the 747 transported passengers on Air Canada, CP Air/Canadian Airlines, Nationair, and Wardair for over 30 years.
