• Crashed airplane lifted from sea in Bali

    Sonny Tumbelaka / AFP - Getty Images

    A section of a Lion Air Boeing 737 is removed from the seaa four days after it crashed while trying to land at Bali's international airport near Denpasar on Wednesday. The pilot and co-pilot of a Lion Air plane that crashed at Bali's airport have passed initial drug tests, an official said on April 15, as investigators probe the causes of the accident that left dozens injured but no fatalities.

    Made Nagi / EPA

    Indonesian millitary partially remove the crashed Lion Air plane from the sea near the coastline of Bali's Ngurah Rai International Airport, Bali, Indonesia. A Lion Air jetliner was forced into an emergency landing near the coastline off Bali's Ngurah Rai Airport on 13 April, after it skidded off the runway. There were 108 people on board the Boeing 737 800 NG plane, which had been coming in for a 3:35 pm (0735 GMT) landing. All passengers were safely evacuated. Forty-five were taken to nearby hospitals for treatment of minor injuries.

    Sonny Tumbelaka / AFP - Getty Images

    Indonesian rescue workers use a crane to remove a section of a Lion Air Boeing 737 from the sea.

    Made Nagi / EPA

    An investigation team from Boeing investigate the wreck of the crashed Lion Air plane as its partially removed from the sea near the coastline of Bali's Ngurah Rai International Airport.

    See our first post in PhotoBlog from the crash.

  • Taking flight in Oregon on lawn chairs

    Dan Cook / Reuters

    Fareed Lafta and Kent Couch (L) lift off from Couch's Stop & Go Mini Mart in Bend, Oregon, July 14. The two men, sitting in lawn chairs tied to a cluster of 350 helium-filled balloons lift-off in a bid to break the Guinness World Record for the longest two-man cluster balloon flight.

    Jeff Barnard / AP

    Oregon gas station owner Kent Couch and Iraqi adventurer Fareed Lafta lift off Saturday, July 14, from Couch's gas station in Bend, Ore., as they attempt to fly some 360 miles to Montana. The flight is a warm-up for a future flight planned in Iraq.

    FROM AP- BEND, Ore. — An Oregon gas station owner and an Iraqi adventurer took flight Saturday aboard a pair of lawn chairs suspended from helium-filled party balloons in an attempt to fly across Oregon and Idaho and into Montana.

    About 90 volunteers and several hundred onlookers counted down and then cheered as Kent Couch and Fareed Lafta lifted off from Couch's Shell gas station. The duo safely cleared a two-story motel, a coffee stand and a light post. Click here to read more about this world-record attempt.

     

  • Solar plane takes off for its first transcontinental flight

    Fabrice Coffrini / AFP - Getty Images

    The Swiss sun-powered aircraft Solar Impulse takes off on May 24, in Payerne on its first attempted intercontinental flight from Switzerland to Morocco. Solar Impulse, piloted by Andre Borschberg, is expected to land in Madrid for a stopover before heading to Morocco without using a drop of fuel. Bertrand Piccard will pilot the second leg on to Rabat, scheduled to leave Madrid on May 28 at the earliest.

    Fabrice Coffrini / AFP - Getty Images

    The president of the Swiss sun-powered aircraft Solar Impulse project, Bertrand Piccard, helps pilot Andre Borschberg prepare for takeoff on May 24, in Payerne on its first attempted intercontinental flight from Switzerland to Morocco.

    AP reports -- An experimental solar-powered airplane took off from Switzerland on its first transcontinental flight Thursday, aiming to reach North Africa next week.

    Pilot Andre Borschberg planned to take the jumbo jet-size Solar Impulse plane on its first leg to Madrid, Spain, by Friday. His colleague Bertrand Piccard will take the helm of the aircraft for the second stretch of its 1,554-mile journey to the Moroccan capital Rabat.

    Fog on the runway at its home base in Payerne, Switzerland, delayed the take off by two hours, demonstrating how susceptible the prototype single-seater aircraft is to adverse weather.

    "We can't fly into clouds because it was not designed for that," Borschberg said as he piloted the lumbering plane with its 207-foot wingspan toward the eastern French city of Lyon at a cruising speed of just 43.5 miles an hour.

    Before landing in Madrid in the early hours of Friday, Borschberg will face other challenges, including having to overfly the Pyrenees, the mountains that separate France and Spain.

    Just in case things go disastrously wrong, Borschberg has a parachute inside his tiny cabin that he hopes never to use. "When you take an umbrella it never rains," he joked in a satellite call with The Associated Press.

    Continue reading.

    Fabrice Coffrini / AFP - Getty Images

    The Swiss sun-powered aircraft Solar Impulse prepares for takeoff on May 24, in Payerne on its first attempted intercontinental flight from Switzerland to Morocco.

    The Solar Impulse will fly from Switzerland to Morocco as the pilot and crew prepare for a trip around the world in 2014. Msnbc.com's Dara Brown reports.

  • Looking back: The Wright brothers' first flight

    By Jonathan Woods, msnbc.com

    Traveling by plane this holiday season? Take a moment to tip your hat to the Wright brothers. On Dec. 17, 1903, Orville and Wilbur Wright became the first to fly with a pilot aboard a powered, heavier-than-air machine. 

    Library of Congress

    First flight, 120 feet in 12 seconds, 10:35 a.m.; Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. (Click on the image for a larger version from the Library of Congress).

    With Orville at the controls and Wilbur mid-stride, this image shows the Wright Flyer (barely) airborne over Kitty Hawk, N.C.. The flight lasted 12 seconds and spanned 120 feet. Wilbur and Orville Wright had invented the first successful airplane.

    Should you happen to be in Washington DC, the Wright Flyer is on display at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

    Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum

    The Wright Flyer, on display at the Air and Space Museum in Washington DC.

    You might also like:
    Wright Brothers interactive on the Smithsonian website
    History of flight: Humankind’s fascination with flight.
    The month in Space pictures: Extraterrestrial dreams
    Style in the skies: Flight attendant fashion over the years

  • Starlings create beautiful aerobatic display in the skies over Scotland

    Scott Heppell / AP

    A flock of starlings is seen as the sun sets above Gretna, Scotland on Nov. 4, 2011.

    By Robert Hood

    Have you ever watched the way a flock of starlings move? It can be hypnotic.

    Wired.com reports

    To watch the uncanny synchronization of a starling flock in flight is to wonder if the birds aren’t actually a single entity, governed by something beyond the usual rules of biology. New research suggests that’s true.

    Mathematical analysis of flock dynamics show how each starling’s movement is influenced by every other starling, and vice versa. It doesn’t matter how large a flock is, or if two birds are on opposite sides. It’s as if every individual is connected to the same network.

    That phenomenon is known as scale-free correlation, and transcends biology. The closest fit to equations describing starling flock patterns come from the literature of “criticality,” of crystal formation and avalanches — systems poised on the brink, capable of near-instantaneous transformation. Read more...

    Video: See Sophie Windsor Clive's video of starling murmuration.

  • Germans claim first flight of manned, electric helicopter

    Beate Kern / e-volo

    Thomas Senkel of e-volo flies the e-volo multicopter, a battery-powered helicopter with sixteen motors and rotors.

    By Jim Seida

    A three-man team from Germany has developed, and flown, a personal helicopter that's powered by lithium batteries running sixteen motors and turning sixteen rotors. You can read about it in msnbc.com's Future of Technology blog.  Be sure to check out the video below, too.

    Beate Kern / e-volo

    The propellers create the full lift, and are also responsible for balancing the device on all three axes only by independent speed control of the motors. E-volo from the beginning has been designed entirely as an electrically powered device. Unlike the rotor of a helicopter, the propellers don´t have any pitch control and therefore no wear. These factors make the multicopter mechanically simple, with close to no maintenance necessary.

     

    At the end of October 2011, Thomas Senkel of e-volo made the first manned flight with an e-powered multicopter at an airstrip in the southwest of Germany. The flight lasted one minute and 30 seconds, after which the constructor and test pilot stated: "The flight characteristics are good natured. Without any steering input it would just hover there on the spot". This could be the future of flight, piloting a device as simple as a car.

     

  • NTSB calls for inspection of Boeing 737 jetliners

    Alex Wong / Getty Images

    National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Deborah Hersman points out on a model Southwest Airlines plane the position where the fuselage skin was torn from a Boeing 737-300 aircraft during a news briefing April 5, at the NTSB headquarters in Washington, DC. The 15-year-old Southwest aircraft was on its way from Phoenix to Sacramento and had to make an emergency landing when the accident happened on Friday, April 1, 2011.

    AP: The order is aimed at finding weaknesses in the metal exterior, but virtually all of the affected aircraft will have already been inspected by the time the order takes effect.

    The safety directive applies to about 175 aircraft worldwide, including 80 planes registered in the U.S., the Federal Aviation Administration said. Of those 80, nearly all are operated by Southwest. Two belong to Alaska Airlines. Read the full story here.

    Shawn Thew / EPA

    Photographers surround the damaged fuselage skin section from Southwest Airlines Flight 812 Boeing 737 in the materials labratory at NTSB Headquarters in Washington, DC April 5. Cracks have been found in five Southwest planes after an emergency inspection was carried out on the airline's fleet when a five-foot hole 'exploded' in the roof of Flight 812 on April 1.

    Go behind the scenes at the Boeing 737 factory in Renton, WA in this slideshow.

    While most manufacturing is done overseas, the 737 is still made in Washington. Find out why.

     

  • Passenger jet flies through flock of large birds over Arkansas

    According to AP:  Little Rock National Airport officials say a Delta Airlines plane landed safely after striking a flock of large birds.

    Little Rock International Airport

    A Delta Airlines plane shows damage after running into a flock of large birds twenty miles from Little Rock International Airport on Friday, April 1.

    Airport spokeswoman T.J. Williams said Flight 5087 was headed to Little Rock from Atlanta when pilots reported the bird strike at 3:38 p.m. Friday, about 20 miles southeast of the airport. Williamssays pilots were able to land without incident and no one on board was hurt. She says passengers have left the plane. Williams didn't know if any of them were making connecting flights.

    KARK

    Williams says Delta officials plan to examine the plane and decide if anything needs to be done. She says officials don't know what kind of birds were hit. Even though the incident didn't occur at the airport, officials use cannons to frighten away birds.

    KARK

     

  • Auto-mechanic builds DIY airplane for $395

    Sheng Li / Reuters

    Ding Shilu, an automobile mechanic, drives his self-made aircraft for a test-flight on the outskirts of Shenyang, Liaoning province, China on Feb. 25. The aircraft, which weighs about 287 lbs and is made of recycled materials including three motorbike engines and plastic cloth, cost about 2600 yuan ($395), local media reported.

    Sheng Li / Reuters

    Ding Shilu carries out a test-flight for his self-made aircraft on Feb. 25.

  • Jetman flies over Switzerland

    By Robert Hood

     It looks fun, but it's hard not to think that this will eventually end badly for Mr. Rossy.

    Laurent Gillieron / POOL / EPA

    Swiss pilot Yves Rossy, the first man in the world to fly with a jet-fitted wing, launches himself from a hot air balloon to perform a loop, near Bercher, Switzerland, Nov. 5, 2010.


    Yves Rossy completed two full loops using a jet-propelled wing in the sky over Switzerland. Msnbc.com's Keva Andersen reports.