2001 in aviation

yearbox
| in?=in aviation
cp=20th Century
c=21st century
cf=22nd century
yp1=1998
yp2=1999
yp3=2000
year=2001
ya1=2002
ya2=2003
ya3=2004
dp3=1970s
dp2=1980s
dp1=1990s
d=2000s
dn1=2010s
dn2=2020s
dn3=2030sThis is a list of aviation-related events from 2001:

Events

March

*March 29 - An Avjet charter flight, a Gulfstream III jet with 15 passengers and 3 crew, crashes on approach into Aspen, CO, killing all on board.

April

* April 24 - The unmanned aircraft RQ-4 Global Hawk flies automatically from Edwards Air Force Base in the US to Australia non-stop and unrefuelled. This is the longest point-to-point flight ever undertaken by an unmanned aircraft, the first pilotless aircraft to cross the Pacific Ocean, and took 23 hours and 23 minutes.

eptember

*September 11 - 4 jet-liners, 2 each of American Airlines and United Airlines, are hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania in the September 11 terrorist attacks, killing more than 3,000 people. One, United Flight 175 almost had a mid-air collision with Delta Air Lines Flight 2315.

October

*October 3 The TU-154 Sibir airlines jet took off from the Ben-Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, Israel bound for the Siberian town of Novosibirsk and Russian aircraft with up to 78 passengers aboard crashed into the Black sea.

*October 8 The aircraft SAS MD87 was taking off from Milan's Linate airport in Italy for a flight to Copenhagen when it collided with a Cessna Citation on the fog-shrouded runway. The airliner then crashed into a nearby hangar and caught fire. All six crew members and 104 passengers on the airliner were killed, as were the four occupants of the business jet and four airport workers on the ground.

November

*November 12 - New York City suffers its second plane disaster in as many months when American Airlines Flight 587 crashes due to mechanical failure, killing 265 people.
*bmi begins transatlantic flights from Manchester after a failed attempt to gain transatlantic flights from London Heathrow Airport.
*British Airways aborts a plan to take over KLM due to technical issues in the open skies treaty between the U.S. and the Netherlands.
*British Airways also drops its controversial ethnic tailfins; first adopted in 1997 the process was slowed in 1999, finally Chief Executive Rod Eddington that all aircraft would be painted with the new Union flag livery (one of the "ethnic" designs).

First flights

January

*January 4 - The HAL Light Combat Aircraft's (LCA's) first technology demonstrator, TD-1.

February

*February 2 - Prototype General Atomics RQ-1 Predator B, later redesignated MQ-9 Reaper.

July

*July 21 - XCOR EZ-Rocket, flown by Dick Rutan.

Entered service