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2003 Master Index 2005

2004 Chronology of Aviation History
Major Aviation Events

January 2004

  • 2 January — Several British Airways flights from London Heathrow Airport to Washington D.C. and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia are cancelled due to security fears. [1]

  • 3 January — Flash Airlines Flight 604 crashes into the Red Sea off the coast of Egypt, killing all 148 aboard. [1]

  • 13 January — An Uzbekistan Airways plane crashes in Uzbekistan's capital of Tashkent, killing all 37 aboard. [1]

February 2004

  • 12 February — United Airlines created another airline, this time called Ted (airline). [1]

March 2004

  • 27 March — NASA's X-43 pilotless plane breaks world speed record for an atmospheric engine by briefly flying at 7,700 kilometers (4,800 mi) per hour (seven times the speed of sound). [1]

April 2004

  • 4 April — Alaska Airlines discontinues service between San Francisco and Tucson. [1]

May 2004

  • 5 May — Air France and Netherlands-based KLM (Royal Dutch Airlines) merge to form the new airline Air France-KLM. [1]

  • 9 May — Southwest Airlines begins service to Philadelphia International Airport in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. [1]

  • 9 May — American Eagle Flight 5401, an ATR-72, crashes on landing at Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico, injuring 17 of the 26 people on board. [1]

  • 12 May — The last McDonnell-Douglas F-4 “Phantom II” fighters are withdrawn from Israeli Air Force service. [1]

  • 23 May — Frontier Airlines begins service to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Billings, Montana; and Spokane, Washington. [1]

  • 27 May — Delta Air Lines begins service between Cincinnati, Ohio, and New Haven, Connecticut. [1]

June 2004

  • 1 — America West Airlines starts service between Phoenix and Anchorage. [1]

  • 6 — Alaska Airlines starts service between Denver and Anchorage and discontinues service between San Jose and Tucson. [1]

  • 18 — The first missile strike by an American unmanned aerial vehicle inside Pakistan takes place when an Lockheed Martin AGM-114 “Hellfire” fired by an General Atomics MQ-1 “Predator” strikes a the house of local Taliban commander Nek Muhammad Wazir in Kari Kot, South Waziristan, killing him, his two brothers, and two bodyguards. [1]

  • 20 — Frontier Airlines begins service to Nashville, Tennessee. [1]

  • 21 — Scaled Composites “SpaceShipOne” is the first non-government built spacecraft to transport a person into space and return safely to earth. [1]

July 2004

  • 14-20 July — The 14th FAI World Rally Flying Championship in Herning, Denmark. Individual winners:

    1. Jirí Filip & Michal Filip (Czech)

    2. František Cihlár & Milos Fiala (Czech)

    3. Krzysztof Wieczorek & Krzysztof Skretowicz (Poland)

    Team winners:

    1. Czech Republic

    2. Poland

    3. France. [1]

  • 19 July — 24 — the 16th FAI World Precision Flying Championship in Herning, Denmark. Individual winners:

    1. Krzysztof Wieczorek (Poland) - 3Xtrim

    2. Petr Opat (Czech) - Cessna 152

    3. Waclaw Wieczorek (Poland) - PZL Wilga 2000

    Team winners:

    1. Poland

    2. Czech Republic

    3. France. [1]

August 2004

  • 24 August — Volga-AviaExpress Flight 1303 and Siberia Airlines Flight 1047 explode south of Domodedovo International Airport in Moscow. The Russian government declares the explosions to have been caused by Chechen terrorists. [1]

September 2004

  • 7 September — Indonesian human-rights and anti-corruption activist Munir Said Thalib dies of arsenic poisoning on a Garuda Indonesia flight from Jakarta, Indonesia, to Amsterdam in the Netherlands. The victim of an assassination, he apparently had been poisoned during a stopover in Singapore. [1]

October 2004

  • 4 October — Scaled Composites “SpaceShipOne” successfully makes her 3rd flight into space and proves to be a plausible option for space tourism, thus winning the “Ansari X-Prize”. [1]

November 2004

  • 1 November — Pan American Airways, or Pan Am III, turned down operations once again, but gave operations to Boston-Maine Airways. [1]

  • 16 November — NASA's X-43 reaches a record speed of Mach 9.8 (7,546 mph, 12,144 km/h). [1]

December 2004

  • 9 December — The U.S. Army issues a request for proposals (RFP) for the Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter (ARH). On the same day, the first American airline, United Airlines, lands in Ho Chi Minh City, which makes it the first US airline to land there since Operation Frequent Wind during the Fall of Saigon in April 1975. [1]

  • 10 December — Two Canadair CT-114 “Tutors” from Canada's “Snowbirds” aerobatic team collide while training near Mossbank, Saskatchewan. Captain Miles Selby is killed and Captain Chuck Mallet is injured. [1]

  • 10 December — The United States Federal Aviation Administration issues an Emergency Airworthiness Directive effectively grounding the entire U.S. fleet of Beechcraft T-34 “Mentor” aircraft. The AD is in response to fatal in-flight structural failure accidents during simulated aerial combat flights. [1]

2004 Aircraft First Flights

  • 2004 — Aero-Cam “Slick 360”. [1]

  • 5 March — Virgin Atlantic “GlobalFlyer”. [1]

  • 29 May — Aceair “AERIKS 200”. [1]

  • 18 June — Airblue flies its first flight, a private airline in Pakistan. [1]

  • 21 June — First sub-orbital flight of Scaled Composites “SpaceShipOne”. [1]

  • 15 July — Aermacchi M-346. [1]

  • 20 July — Aerocomp “Comp Air Jet”. [1]

Works Cited

  1. Timeline and History: Wikipedia. 2004 in Aviation

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