Aviation
Aviation Events
The major airshows and historic milestones worth marking on the calendar. Looking for aircraft flying near you right now? Head to Flight Radar.
Major airshows
Typical annual or biennial windows — confirm exact dates with the organizer before you plan a trip.
Dubai Airshow
Dubai World Central, UAE
Major Middle East trade show, known for large commercial aircraft order announcements.
Singapore Airshow
Changi Exhibition Centre, Singapore
Asia's largest aerospace and defense show — trade days plus a public weekend.
Paris Air Show (Le Bourget)
Le Bourget, France
The oldest and one of the largest aerospace trade shows in the world.
Farnborough International Airshow
Farnborough, UK
Major trade show for new aircraft programs and defense contracts, with a public weekend.
EAA AirVenture Oshkosh
Oshkosh, Wisconsin, US
The world's busiest airport for a week — warbirds, homebuilts, and daily airshows.
MAKS International Aviation and Space Salon
Zhukovsky, Russia
Russia's principal aerospace and defense exhibition.
Aviation history
The moments that changed how we fly.
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1903
Wright Flyer — first powered flight
On a windswept dune at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville and Wilbur Wright achieved what centuries of inventors had chased: sustained, controlled, powered flight in a heavier-than-air machine. Orville piloted the first flight — 120 feet in 12 seconds — lying prone on the lower wing, working a hip cradle to control the rudder. They flew three more times that day, the longest covering 852 feet in 59 seconds. The brothers had spent years studying bird flight, building wind tunnels, and testing gliders before ever adding an engine. Their insight that control mattered as much as lift and power is what separated them from every failed attempt before them.
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1919
First non-stop transatlantic flight
British aviators John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown took off from St. John's, Newfoundland, in a modified Vickers Vimy bomber and landed — nose-down in an Irish bog — in Clifden, Ireland, roughly 16 hours later. They flew through fog, snow, and ice with no radio and only rudimentary instruments; Brown reportedly climbed onto the wings mid-flight to chip ice off the engines by hand. The flight won them the Daily Mail's £10,000 prize and proved that an ocean crossing without stopping was possible, eight years before Lindbergh's more famous solo flight.
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1932
Amelia Earhart's solo transatlantic flight
Five years after Lindbergh's solo crossing, Amelia Earhart took off from Newfoundland alone in a Lockheed Vega 5B, aiming for Paris. Icy conditions, a cracked exhaust manifold, and a leaking fuel gauge forced her down early, in a pasture near Derry, Northern Ireland, after roughly 15 hours in the air. She became the first woman — and only the second person after Lindbergh — to fly solo across the Atlantic, instantly turning her into one of the most famous people in the world and cementing her role as an advocate for women in aviation.
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1947
Chuck Yeager breaks the sound barrier
Two days after breaking two ribs in a horseback-riding accident he hid from his superiors, U.S. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager climbed into the Bell X-1 — nicknamed Glamorous Glennis after his wife — and was dropped from the belly of a B-29 over the Mojave Desert. At around 45,000 feet, he pushed past Mach 1, producing the first sonic boom heard by human ears on purpose. Many engineers at the time feared the 'sound barrier' was a physical wall that would tear an aircraft apart; Yeager's flight proved it was simply a threshold to be crossed with the right design.
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1952
First jet airliner enters service
The de Havilland Comet cut flight times nearly in half and flew high above the weather and turbulence propeller airliners had to fly through, offering a smoothness passengers had never experienced. Its debut on the London-to-Johannesburg route marked the start of the jet age for commercial aviation. The triumph was short-lived: within two years, a string of fatal crashes traced to metal fatigue around the Comet's square window frames grounded the fleet. The investigation reshaped how every jet airliner since has been engineered, tested, and certified.
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1969
Boeing 747 — first flight
Built on a bet that airport congestion — not passenger demand — would soon be the industry's biggest problem, Boeing's 747 was, for its time, an almost absurdly large aircraft, with a distinctive hump housing an upper-deck lounge. Its first flight from Paine Field in Everett, Washington, proved out a wide-body layout that would define long-haul travel for decades and make intercontinental flying dramatically cheaper per seat. The 747 went on to serve as cargo hauler, presidential transport, and even a space shuttle carrier, remaining in production for over 50 years.
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1969
Concorde — first flight
A joint program between Britain and France, Concorde was designed to more than halve transatlantic flight times by cruising at twice the speed of sound. Its first test flight from Toulouse, piloted by André Turcat, proved out a delta-wing design so distinctive it remains instantly recognizable decades later. Concorde entered commercial service in 1976 and could cross the Atlantic in under three and a half hours — but high fuel burn, a limited route network, and the 2000 Air France crash near Paris led to its retirement in 2003, leaving supersonic passenger travel dormant ever since.