Timeline of Aviation

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In 2003 we celebrated the 100-th anniversary of the beginning of air activity by mankind.

Otto Liliental, the German engineer is considered to be a forerunner of air activity; in 1891 he started making controlled flights on gliders of his own design. The Wright brothers were the first to join airframe to the engine and to provide its controllability in the flight. On December 17, 1903, they flew the first successful powered flight, though their aircraft was impractical to fly for more than a short distance because of control problems. The boom of aviation began in France after the Brazilian Alberto Santos-Dumont circled the Eiffel Tower on his airplane in 1906. In 1908 he built Demoiselle, one of the world’s first airplanes of the normal configuration, which includes tail units. Hereafter aircraft began to transport people and cargo as designs grew larger and more reliable. In the 1930s the Douglas DC-3 became the first airliner to carry passengers exclusively, starting the modern era of passenger airline service.

Aviation penetrated from France into the Russian empire via Ukraine. On the 8-th of March 1910 Mikhail Yefimov performed the first demonstrative flights in Odessa. He was the first professionally qualified pilot in Russia. Definitely the pleiad of eminent Ukrainian scientists, designers, pilots contributed greatly to the improvement of national aviation as well as world aviation. They are Sergey Utochkin, Mikhail Yefimov, Ihor Sikorsky, Petr Nesterov, Oleg Antonov.

Aviation has three main divisions: general aviation, commercial aviation, and military aviation.

General aviation includes different types of aircraft from light planes to big, high-speed, long-range planes with up-to-date flight and navigation systems which provide safety.

Commercial aviation refers to airline, which can range in size. There are many small commuter aircraft to carry only a few passengers and big carriers for several hundred passengers. The first small commercial airlines began to carry mail in the early 20-s of the XX-th century.

Military aviation refers to the Army, Navy and the Air Force. It includes fighters, bombers, transports and helicopters.

Nowadays aviation is one of the world’s major industries, involving business and leisure activities on a grand scale, providing employment to many millions of people. It’s difficult to find such field of economics where aviation is not used. Civil aviation became one of its most important branches. Airmen perform more than 100 functions in the national economy. It is impossible to imagine the development of such modern infrastructures as cargo transportation, people transportation, telecommunication, agriculture, building, medicine without aviation.