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Aviation and space timeline

The milestones of aerospace history, from the pioneers to today.

1900s
  • December 17, 1903

    Wright brothers’ first flight

    First flight — On December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, Orville Wright covered 120 feet in 12 seconds aboard the Flyer: the first controlled, sustained, powered flight in history.

1910s
  • 1917

    First flight of the Fokker V.4

    First flight — Fokker's first genuine triplane, the V.4, made its first flight in 1917. Its excessive control forces led to the next prototype, the V.5, the direct basis of the production Dr.I.

  • June 25, 1919

    First flight of the Junkers F 13

    First flight — The Junkers F 13 flew for the first time on 1919-06-25.

1920s
1930s
  • February 8, 1933

    First flight of the Boeing 247

    First flight — The Boeing 247 flew for the first time on 1933-02-08.

  • May 11, 1934

    First flight of the Douglas DC-2

    First flight — The Douglas DC-2 flew for the first time on 1934-05-11.

  • May 28, 1935

    First flight of the Messerschmitt Bf 109

    First flight — The Messerschmitt Bf 109 flew for the first time on 1935-05-28.

  • July 28, 1935

    First flight of the Model 299, the B-17 prototype

    First flight — On 28 July 1935 the Model 299 — Boeing's company-funded prototype of what would become the B-17 — made its first flight in Seattle with chief test pilot Leslie Tower at the controls. The day before, a Seattle Times reporter had coined the nickname "Flying Fortress" after seeing the number of machine guns bristling from the fuselage. The aircraft combined features of the experimental XB-15 bomber and the Model 247 transport, powered by four Pratt & Whitney R-1690 Hornet engines.

  • July 28, 1935

    First flight of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress

    First flight — The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress flew for the first time on 1935-07-28.

  • March 5, 1936

    First flight of the Supermarine Spitfire

    First flight — The Supermarine Spitfire flew for the first time on 1936-03-05.

  • July 3, 1936

    First flight of the Short Empire

    First flight — The Short Empire flew for the first time on 1936-07-03.

  • June 1, 1939

    First flight of the Focke-Wulf Fw 190

    First flight — The Focke-Wulf Fw 190 flew for the first time on 1939-06-01.

  • August 27, 1939

    First turbojet-powered flight (Heinkel He 178)

    First flight — On 27 August 1939 German test pilot Erich Warsitz took the Heinkel He 178 into the air, the world's first aircraft to fly on the thrust of a turbojet engine. Warsitz had already made the first flight of a liquid-fuelled rocket-powered aeroplane, the He 176, on 20 June of the same year. The He 178 opened the jet age that would dominate military and commercial aviation for the rest of the century.

  • December 29, 1939

    First flight of the Consolidated B-24 Liberator

    First flight — The Consolidated B-24 Liberator flew for the first time on 1939-12-29.

1940s
  • May 13, 1940

    First free flight of the Vought-Sikorsky VS-300

    First flight — On 13 May 1940 the VS-300, designed by Igor Sikorsky, made its first untethered free flight. With a single three-blade main rotor originally driven by a 75-horsepower engine, it was the first successful single-lifting-rotor helicopter in the United States and the first to counter torque with a vertical-plane tail rotor. That layout went on to become the industry standard for helicopters.

  • August 19, 1940

    First flight of the North American NA-62/B-25

    First flight — The NA-62 prototype, developed from the NA-40B to meet a USAAC requirement, made its first test flight at Inglewood, California, flown by Vance Breese with North American engineer Roy Ferren aboard. The flight revealed a Dutch roll tendency that led to the later gull-wing redesign.

  • October 26, 1940

    First flight of the NA-73X (P-51 Mustang)

    First flight — The NA-73X prototype, precursor of the P-51 Mustang, made its first flight on 26 October 1940 at Mines Field, North American Aviation's factory airfield in Inglewood, California, 149 days after the RAF contract was signed.

  • January 9, 1941

    First flight of the Avro Lancaster

    First flight — The Avro Lancaster flew for the first time on 1941-01-09.

  • February 14, 1942

    First flight of the Douglas DC-4

    First flight — The Douglas DC-4 flew for the first time on 1942-02-14.

  • September 21, 1942

    First flight of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress

    First flight — The Boeing B-29 Superfortress flew for the first time on 1942-09-21.

  • February 15, 1946

    First flight of the Douglas DC-6

    First flight — The Douglas DC-6 flew for the first time on 1946-02-15.

  • July 8, 1947

    First flight of the Boeing 377 Stratocruiser

    First flight — The Boeing 377 Stratocruiser flew for the first time on 1947-07-08.

  • 1948

    Mil Mi-1 first flight

    First flight — In 1948 the Mil Mi-1 flew for the first time as the first Soviet production helicopter. It opened mass helicopter production in the USSR.

  • July 27, 1949

    De Havilland Comet first flight

    First flight — On July 27, 1949 the de Havilland Comet took off from Hatfield as the first commercial jet airliner in history. Its maiden flight opened the jet transport era.

1950s
1960s
1970s
1980s
1990s
2000s
  • October 24, 2000

    First flight of the X-35A demonstrator

    First flight — The X-35A, the first of Lockheed Martin's two demonstrators for the Joint Strike Fighter competition, lifted off at 09:06 Pacific time from Air Force Plant 42 at Palmdale, California, with test pilot Tom Morgenfeld at the controls. It used a little over 2,000 feet of runway and landed uneventfully at Edwards Air Force Base. The flight opened the test campaign that would pit the X-35 against Boeing's X-32.

  • December 16, 2000

    First flight of the X-35C, the carrier-variant demonstrator

    First flight — Test pilot Joe Sweeney, a former Navy attack aviator, took off at 09:23 Pacific time from Lockheed Martin's Palmdale plant and flew for twenty-seven minutes, climbing to 10,000 feet and accelerating to 250 knots before landing at Edwards. The X-35C was distinguished by a larger wing and control surfaces and by structure reinforced for catapult launch and arrested recovery. Its campaign concentrated on handling qualities in the carrier approach.

  • December 17, 2004

    First flight of the Antonov An-148

    First flight — The Antonov An-148 flew for the first time on 2004-12-17.

  • April 27, 2005

    First flight of the Airbus A380

    First flight — The Airbus A380 flew for the first time on 2005-04-27.

  • December 15, 2006

    First flight of the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II

    First flight — The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II flew for the first time on 2006-12-15.

  • June 11, 2008

    First flight of the F-35B, the short take-off and vertical landing variant

    First flight — The first F-35B took off conventionally at 10:17 Central time from the Fort Worth plant, with Graham Tomlinson — a BAE Systems pilot and former RAF Harrier flyer — at the controls. It climbed to 15,000 feet to check handling qualities, engine power variations and subsystems, landing forty-four minutes later. The lift fan was not used on this sortie: vertical-mode testing would come almost two years later.

  • November 28, 2008

    First flight of the COMAC ARJ21

    First flight — The COMAC ARJ21 flew for the first time on 2008-11-28.

2010s
  • January 29, 2010

    First flight of the Sukhoi T-50 (future Su-57)

    First flight — The first prototype, T-50-1, made its maiden flight on 29 January 2010 from Dzemgi airfield in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, flown by test pilot Sergei Bogdan. The roughly 47-minute flight served as a preliminary assessment of the aircraft's handling, engine and main systems, including the landing gear, and proceeded according to the planned programme.

  • June 6, 2010

    First flight of the F-35C, the U.S. Navy carrier variant

    First flight — The first F-35C lifted off at 11:46 from Naval Air Station Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base and flew for fifty-seven minutes. At the controls was Jeff Knowles, a Lockheed Martin test pilot and retired naval aviator with operational experience on the F-14 and a stint as chief test pilot on the F-117 programme. Several secondary sources place the flight on the 7th, confusing it with the date of the press release, which describes the previous day's flight.