The magnificently named Spitfire. Rory McGrath’s Industrial Revelations: Best of British Engineering s5e2: Planes, Discovery 2006
Frank Whittle had invented the jet engine ... Sir Frank Whittle’s Gloster Meteor which launched the jet age. ibid.
The Comet was simply the most glamorous plane ever built ... The first Comet was built in 1949 ... In October 1952 a Comet crashed on take-off in Rome: over the next two years five more Comets crashed. In 1954 the Comet was grounded. ibid.
The Harrier has everything a good jet fighter needs. Speed, agility, fire-power ... The Harrier can take off and land vertically. It can hover and manoeuvre in mid-air ... Test flights with the P11-27 began in 1960 ... By 1966 the first Harrier jump jet, the sexiest jet fighter ever built, was in the air. ibid.
Concorde was a step into the unknown ... Concorde is a beautiful memorial to the unassuming smoking cardigan-wearing problem-solvers who are the real heroes of British engineering. It’s just a damn shame she’s been grounded. ibid.
The most famous airport in the world. The busiest international airport on the planet ... The world’s busiest crossroads: Heathrow. Rory McGrath’s Industrial Revelations Best of British Engineering s5e6: Transport Networks, Discovery 2008
Six miles above the people of Lockerbie there’s an explosion aboard 103. Days that Shook the World s1e8: Black September/Lockerbie, BBC 2003
A three hundred foot fireball engulfs the town. ibid.
There were twelve children under the age of ten on board. ibid.
The most controversial passenger plane ever built is in the dock. Days that Shook the World s1e11: Marconi/Concorde
Concorde has already proven its supersonic credentials. ibid.
The Supreme Court makes its decision: Concorde can land at JFK. ibid.
Concorde’s four Rolls Royce engines have the same power as 6,000 family cars. ibid.
It’s the world’s only supersonic airliner. ibid.
The crew has a clear view of the Earth’s curve on the horizon. ibid.
By outpacing the rotation of the Earth, Concorde has in effect arrived more than two hours before it took off. ibid.
Concorde made its final landing at London Heathrow in 2003. ibid.
The catastrophic loss of the Hindenburg airship ... May 6th 1937: The great airship Hindenburg is approaching the coast of Nova Scotia. The size of four football pitches. Days that Shook the World s2e1: Disaster in the Sky, BBC 2004
The largest and most luxurious airship ever built. ibid.
Sixty-one crew and thirty-six passengers (each paying $400). ibid.
Landing an airship is by far the hardest part of any flight. ibid.
President Eisenhower approved a $35,000,000 programme to produce twenty high-altitude surveillance aircraft. After eight months of trials the U2 was born. The test pilots nicknamed it the Angel. Days That Shook the World s2e9: Cold War Spies
Just after 10:30 on the morning of 10th January 1954 a British Comet ... took off from Rome. Vanishings: The Comet Airliner Mystery, 2003
On the evening of the 25th July 1949 the world’s first jet airliner rolled out of its hangar. The De Havilland Comet was powered by four huge jet engines, two mounted on two wings. ibid.
The entire Comet fleet was taken out of service. ibid.
Another Comet overshot the runway at Entebbe, Uganda ... In 1953 a Canadian airlines Comet crashed ... The Comet exploded in mid-air ... BOAC and De Havilland were reluctant to accept this. ibid.
The Yoke-Yoke disappeared ... The British government acted immediately. ibid.
A new generation of Comets was commissioned almost immediately. ibid.
On the evening of the 24th November 1971 a Northwest Airlines Boeing 727 took off from Seattle on route for Reno, Nevada. It had been hijacked by a man claiming to have a bomb on board. About twenty minutes into the flight while flying over the Cascade mountains the pilot saw a light indicating that the rear door was open. Moments later with the plane at an altitude of 10,000 feet the crew realised that the hijacker had parachuted out into the chilly night. Tied securely around his waist was a rucksack containing the money he demanded in return for not blowing up the plane. With $200,000 in $20 bills he vanished without a trace. Vanishings: The Only Successful Hijacking?
Cooper received wide news coverage. He was the only person in the States to have hijacked a plane and got clean away with the ransom money. Some saw him as a kind of folk hero. ibid.
Eight-year-old Brian Ingram came across three packets of waterlogged $20 bills on the banks of the Columbia River near Vancouver Washington. ibid.
Soaring machines are excellent schooling machines and that is all they are meant to be until power in the shape of an engine is added. Percy Pilcher, lecture 1897, ‘Experiments in Flying Machines’
On 28th December 1978 a DC8 aircraft belonging to United Airlines was approaching Portland, Oregon. It was early evening ... The first officer who was flying the leg requested the wing flaps be extended by fifteen degrees ... Then they lowered the landing gear; as the captain did so they noticed a thump ... Yet thirty minutes later that aircraft crashed here in a wood ... For United it was only one of a spate of three crashes. And in each case the official report blamed pilot error. Horizon: The Wrong Stuff, BBC 1986
On August 2nd 1947 a British Lancastrian airliner called Stardust took off on a routine passenger flight across South America ... There was no explanation for why Stardust had crashed ... In 1947 the Phenomenon itself [Jet Steam] was largely unknown. Horizon: Vanished: The Plane that Disappeared, BBC 2000
One hundred years ago the entire course of human history was transformed by one of the greatest inventions of all time – powered flight. From the Wright Brothers first flight in 1903 history has marvelled ... But what of the name Percy Pilcher? ... Percy Pilcher could have been the first person to fly. Horizon: Percy Pilcher’s Flying Machine, BBC 2003
Pilcher had made a succession of what he called soaring machines. ibid.
Before an invited audience in a field in Kent Pilcher flew the Hawk over a record two hundred and fifty yards. It was a sensation. ibid.
His triplane could have flown. ibid.
Air travel has transformed our lives ... Improvements in aviation safety have been driven by the stuff of nightmares – air crashes. Every crash has its causes, and this information is used by scientists to prevent the same failures from happening again. Impact! A Horizon Guide to Plane Crashes, BBC 2013
The ill-fated Comet: built in Britain and launched in 1952 it was the first passenger jet to go into service ... In all 67 people died in the crashes – it was a disaster for the British aircraft industry. ibid.
Fog is particularly dangerous when a pilot is attempting to land. ibid.
The seats they were sitting on killed them. Prior to the Manchester crash there were relatively few regulations. ibid.
On 8th January 1978 British Midland Flight 92 to Belfast: the left engine caught fire. ibid.
Human error is the most common cause of air crashes. ibid.
The Mystery of Flight 447: Air France Flight 447 Rio to Paris: the plane crashed into the Atlantic. ibid.
This is the inside story of a disaster that seems unimaginable in our times. How can an airliner full of people vanish without a trace? 26 nations joined the hunt for Malaysian Airlines 370. Horizon: Where is Flight MH370? BBC 2014
The most challenging search in human history. ibid.
Kuala Lumpur ... to their counterparts in Vietnam ... air traffic control were tracking it. ibid.
Surveillance blindspots will be a thing of the past ... This new tracking system was useless. ibid.
The aircraft had flown on for seven more hours: and it could be thousands of miles away from the south China sea. ibid.
No sign of the aircraft had been found. ibid.
Sunday August 14th 2005: Cypriot airliner Helios 522 is circling above Athens. There are 121 people on board including 22 children. Nobody has been able to contact the plane for over two hours. Two F-16s are scrambled to intercept the renegade aircraft. As they approach the fighter, pilots see two people struggling inside the cockpit. Could this be a terrorist hijack? Then dramatically the plane veers off course and crashes at 400 miles an hour into a hillside north of Athens. Aircrash Unsolved: The Mystery of Helios 522, Discovery 2006