Aviation History

How Cessna nearly entered the business aviation market with a four-engine, propeller-driven, eight-passenger airplane.

How the US Army approaches flight training and develops their flight instructors.

How the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress was modified to fight wildfires.

How Cessna utilized an existing business jet for the testing and evaluation of a new engine.

The Boeing Stratocruiser represented a significant evolution in early airline travel

How Gulfstream business jets were modified by NASA to serve as training platforms for Space Shuttle pilots.

While many undoubtedly recognize the Ford emblem and the vehicles it adorns, Ford manufactured another machine that few may recognize today, but which revolutionized the 1920s and 1930s. It was a flying machine called the Trimotor.

Originally designed as one of the first purpose-built business jets, the Lockheed L-1329 Jetstar cast a formidable shadow even before the installation of NASA’s experimental equipment. Unlike most business jets, the Jetstar utilized four engines – and it did so with the unique rear-mounted arrangement seen here.

What kind of individual would purposely land an airplane on the White House lawn? In modern times, one interested in lengthy imprisonment – if they survive the landing at all.

First flown in 1969, some 1,574 examples of the 747 were manufactured over a span of 55 years. Comprised of some six million individual parts, the massive airliner required correspondingly large manufacturing facilities.

In the late 1930s, few forms of travel were as luxurious or exclusive as intercontinental trips aboard Boeing 314 Clipper flying boats operated by Pan American World Airways.

U.S. water ski champion Bruce Parker wows the crowd as he’s pulled by a Luscombe Model 8 aircraft across Biscayne Bay near Miami, Florida, in 1946.

A Tupolev Tu-144 supersonic transport jet lifts off the runway at Russia’s Zhukovsky Air Development Center in September 1998.

A wind tunnel model representing the Cessna Citation X is evaluated by NASA.

A Yuneec E430 on display at EAA AirVenture in 2009.

An overview of the history of Gulfstream Aerospace and the various aircraft models that the company developed between the 1950s and the present day.

An overview of the Beechcraft Model 17 Staggerwing, an early single-engine biplane developed in the 1930s.

For a time, Mexicana operated a small fleet of Boeing 727s with rockets. Known as rocket assisted takeoff, or “RATO”, these provided supplemental thrust in the event of an engine failure during takeoff. The combination of high-altitude and high temperatures at many of the airports serviced by Mexicana created conditions…