Famous Last Achievements in Aviation

It's the same in aviation. The Wright Brothers. Charles Lindbergh. Jena Yeager and Dick Rutan, Steve Fossett. All famous first achievers.

But there's a whole other segment of accomplishments: the last, or mostly likely, the last time something has been done. A dozen things that will (in most cases) never be done again. For many of them, that is a very good thing. For others, it's bittersweet. And for all of them, the accomplishment, while in some ways more poignant that the initial accomplishment, have largely faded into the annals of history. 

Back in 1941, engineers wanted to know how much improvement to takeoff performance strapping a small rocket to the side of an Ercoupe could make. Answer: a lot. The test, conducted at March Field in Southern California, used a solid fuel rocket---yes, they still call it a JATO (jet-assisted takeoff) and not a RATO---that put out a modest 28 pounds of thrust for 12 seconds. Doesn't sound like much, but that Ercoupe really went up fast! 

In the early 1990s, regime changes in Ethiopia sparked renewed concerns about the welfare of Ethiopian Jews, prompting Israel to launch Operation Solomon, which airlifted nearly 15,000 refugees to Israel in a span of just 36 hours. One of the planes pressed into service, an El Al Boeing 747, airlifted a record number of passengers, which is widely reported as 1,088, though it's believed that many children made their way onto the plane hidden inside their mothers' skirts. 

This is as crazy as it sounds, but on two separate occasions, a total of three wingsuit flyers flew into the open doors of an airplane. The most recent and presumably last such leap was accomplished in 2017 by Fred Fugen and Vince Reffet, who lept from an alpine peak and flew into the open doors of a Pilatus PC-6. They made the jump on the 20th anniversary of the first such successful leap, by French wingsuiter Patrick de Gayardon. 

*Editor's note: Okay, this is one "last" that didn't stay that way. In 2022, a pair of pilots infamously attempted to bail out of their respective Cessna 182s and fly into the other pilot's plane. One of them managed to do that, while the other had to parachute to safety, with the plane crashing catastrophically (with no injuries on the ground.) The FAA, as you might imagine, wasn't amused.

A pair of aviators, Bob Timm and John Cook, set the endurance record of all endurance records when, in 1958, they flew a specially outfitted and highly modified Cessna 172 around the desert of the American Southwest for 64 days, 22 hours and 19 minutes. During that time, they were refueled more than 125 times from a speeding pickup truck on a flat stretch of highway below. The Cessna 172 they did it in is now hanging in the rafters at McCarran International Airport. 

Smoking on a plane. Makes sense, right? No! But for decades, it was standard practice. Over time, good sense took hold, and lighting up in the cabin was crushed out like a bad butt. On June 3, 2000, the United States banned smoking on all domestic and international commercial flights. China didn't ban smoking on its flights until 2017, though reports are that it continues to allow its pilots to smoke in the cockpit. 

As of 2015 in the United States, the noisiest jets (Stage 1) were banned from operating, part of a successful program to cut aircraft noise by a whopping 32dB.

The 1979 class was the last one that featured an all-male cast, as in 1976, 176 female cadets joined the ranks and graduated in 1980. Hats off to all!

In 1944, the first person to fly a powered heavier-than-air craft made one last flight, hopping a ride with Howard Hughes aboard a Lockheed Constellation. Orville Wright was 73 years old. (His brother Wilbur had died in 1912 of typhoid fever.) Four years after his literal final sortie, Orville took his figurative last flight, dying of a heart attack at the age of 77. 

Didier Delsalle landed his Eurocopter AS350 Squirrel atop the world's highest piece of real estate on May 14, 2005. He repeated the feat the next day to show it was no fluke. No fluke, but it was treacherous and super risky. The hardest part, he said, was landing on the snow, not knowing how much snow he would have to settle through before his helicopter settled its weight on the world's most famous summit.

To commemorate a famous 1944 dogfight, in which American P-51 pilot and fighter ace William Overstreet Jr. chased a Messerschmitt 109 under the Eiffel Tower, a Bonanza in 1991 repeated the feat, with support from the French government. How many pilots have flown under the arch of the tower? Probably more than a few. It has been done since at least since WWI, and few of the pilots who have done so stepped up to take credit for the feat. 

Can a plane land inverted? Of course, it can. Aerobatic airplanes are regularly flown upside down. But landing? Piece of cake for a skilled aerobatic ace, though. But unless it's got landing gear on top, it'll probably be their last landing. Aerobatic performer and Hollywood actor Craig Hosking has done it, many times! For a while, Hosking, who has been busy making movies of late (most recently on 2017's Dunkirk), made inverted landings in his Pitts biplane specially outfitted with landing gear on both top and bottom. Thanks all the same, but we'll avoid that plane if it shows up on the line at our flying club! Some temptations one does not need! 

To our knowledge, this has been done just once, in March of 1967 during the Vietnam War, when an American pilot, Captain Robert Pardo, used the canopy of his McDonnell Douglas F-4, suffering damage from anti-aircraft fire, to help extend the flight time of another F-4. To do this, Pardo positioned his jet beneath the other and used his canopy to push up on the extended tailhook of the other jet, flown by Captain Earl Aman. The maneuver, known as "Pardo's Push," succeeded in getting both planes into slightly less-hostile territory before they all had to bail out. Both of the pilots and both of their backseaters successfully ejected and were later rescued by U.S. forces, considerably worse for the wear but alive and soon on their way back home to be with their families.

Aviation Breakthroughs: Personal Jets