24th Sept 1852....Henri Giffard flies 17 miles from Paris to Élancourt in a steam-powered dirigible,reaching a speed of about 6.2 mph due to headwinds.The craft was controllable with limited steering.
24th Sept 1925....Lt.Jimmy Doolittle in U.S. Army Curtiss R3C-2,BuNo A6979,'3',wins The Schneider Trophey Race with top speed of 233 miles per hour.It was held at Chesapeake Bay,USA.
24th Sept 1930....First flight of the Short S.8/8 Rangoon,a three-engined biplane flying boat,for the RAF.Powerplant 3 × Bristol Jupiter XIF,of 540 hp.Just 6 were built,and they retired in 1935.
24th Sept 1938....Three Soviet women,fly the Tupolev ANT-37 Rodina “Motherland” nonstop across the Soviet Union,achieving a women’s world nonstop distance record of 3,674 miles in 26hrs 29min.
24th Sept 1940....French Air Force bombers raid Gibraltar,in retaliation for the British July attacks on French warships at Mers-el-Kébir and Dakar.Britain wanted to stop Germany from using the ships.
24th Sept 1946....Hong Kong airline Cathay Pacific is founded.It`s first aircraft was a Douglas DC-3.It has won the worlds best airline award 4 times,assuming people can spell it correctly.
24th Sept 1949....First flight of the North American Aviation T-28 Trojan.A piston-engined military trainer and light attack aircraft.Oddly,it was operated by 28 countries military forces.
24th Sept 1958....Guided air-to-air missiles are used in combat for the first time when Republic of China Air Force F-86F Sabres use AIM-9B Sidewinder`s to down several People’s Republic of China MiG-15`s.
24th Sept 1959....A Lockheed U-2C,56-6693 makes an emergency landing at the civilian airfield at Fujisawa,damaging belly.Japanese police arrive,the aircraft is repaired. this is the airframe that pilot Francis Gary Powers will be shot down in,in May 1960.
24th Sept 1966....Marina Solovyeva sets a new women's airspeed record of 1,270 mph in the Mikoyan-Gurevich Ye-76,a variant of the Mig-21 family of fighter/interceptors.
24th Sept 1972....Japan Airlines Flight 472,a Douglas DC-8 with 122 on board,overruns the runway after landing at the wrong airport;no fatalities.
24th Sept 1987....A Tornado F3,ZE155,from Boscombe Down,made the first non-stop un-refuelled crossing of the Atlantic by a UK jet fighter.The sortie covered 2,200nms in 4 hr 45 min.
24th Sept 2001....13 days after 9/11,US Airways decided to terminate all flights from MetroJet.It`s operations did not improve US Airways's loss-making record,and it`s fleet was ageing badly.