Boeing 747 in the context of Shuttle Carrier Aircraft

Aviation includes the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. Aircraft include fixed-wing and rotary-wing types, morphable wings, wing-less lifting bodies, as well as lighter-than-air aircraft such as hot air balloons and airships.

Aviation began in the 18th century with the development of the hot air balloon, an apparatus capable of atmospheric displacement through buoyancy. Clément Ader built the "Ader Éole" in France and made an uncontrolled, powered hop in 1890. This was the first powered aircraft, although it did not achieve controlled flight. Some of the most significant advancements in aviation technology came with the controlled gliding flying of Otto Lilienthal in 1896. A major leap followed with the construction of the Wright Flyer, the first powered airplane by the Wright brothers in the early 1900s.

A unit load device (ULD) is a container used to load luggage, freight, and mail on wide-body aircraft and specific narrow-body aircraft. It allows preloading of cargo, provided the containerised load fits in the aircraft, enabling efficient planning of aircraft weight and balance and reduced labour and time in loading aircraft holds compared with 'bulk-loading' single items of cargo or luggage by hand. Each ULD has its own packing list or manifest so that its contents can be tracked. A loaded aircraft cargo pallet secured with a cargo net also forms a ULD, but its load must be gauged for size in addition to being weighed to ensure aircraft door and hold clearances.

The IATA publishes ULD regulations and notes there are 900,000 in service worth more than US$1 billion, averaging $1100 each.

Pan American World Airways, originally founded as Pan American Airways and more commonly known as Pan Am, was an airline that was the principal and largest international air carrier and unofficial flag carrier of the United States for much of the 20th century. The first airline to fly worldwide, it pioneered innovations such as jumbo jets and computerized reservation systems, and introduced the first American jetliner in 1958. Until its dissolution on December 4, 1991, Pan Am "epitomized the luxury and glamour of intercontinental travel", and it remains a cultural icon of the 20th century, identified by its blue globe logo ("The Blue Meatball"), the use of the word "Clipper" in its aircraft names and call signs, and the white uniform caps of its pilots.

Founded in 1927 by two U.S. Army Air Corps majors, Pan Am began as a scheduled airmail and passenger service flying between Key West, Florida, and Havana, Cuba. In the 1930s, under the leadership of American entrepreneur Juan Trippe, the airline purchased a fleet of flying boats and focused its route network on Central and South America, gradually adding transatlantic and transpacific destinations. By the mid-20th century, Pan Am enjoyed a near monopoly on international routes. It led the aircraft industry into the Jet Age by acquiring new jetliners such as the Boeing 707 and Boeing 747. Pan Am's modern fleet allowed it to fly larger numbers of passengers, at a longer range, and with fewer stops than rivals. Its primary hub and flagship terminal was the Worldport at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City.

An international airport is an airport with customs and border control facilities, enabling passengers to travel between countries around the world. International airports are usually larger than domestic airports, and feature longer runways and have facilities to accommodate heavier aircraft such as the Boeing 747 and the Airbus A380 commonly used for international and intercontinental travel. International airports often host domestic flights, which helps feed both passengers and cargo into international ones (and vice versa).

Buildings, operations, and management have become increasingly sophisticated since the mid-20th century, when international airports began to provide infrastructure for international civilian flights. Detailed technical standards have been developed to ensure safety and common coding systems implemented to provide global consistency. The physical structures that serve millions of individual passengers and flights are among the most complex and interconnected in the world. By the second decade of the 21st century, over 1,200 international airports existed with around 3.8 billion international passengers as of January 2023 along with 50 million metric tonnes of cargo passing through them annually.

Dzaoudzi–Pamandzi International Airport (IATA: DZA, ICAO: FMCZ) is an airport located in Pamandzi, Mayotte, France on the southern tip of the island of Petite-Terre (or Pamanzi), east of Grande-Terre, the main island of Mayotte. It is the only airport in Mayotte with scheduled services, mainly to destinations within Africa to Réunion, another French island in the area. The airport was able to service aircraft up to the Boeing 777 in size until 2015.

A new runway (16/34) to the west of the original single runway was planned, and was built 2,600 metres in length to accommodate larger aircraft such as the Airbus A380 and Boeing 747. Once built, the older runway became a taxiway. There was also a new terminal built to replace the previous departure and arrival buildings. This project was completed in 2015. The headquarters of Ewa Air are located on the airport property.

Wake Island (Marshallese: Ānen Kio, lit. 'island of the kio flower'), also known as Wake Atoll (Chamorro: Islan Wake), is a coral atoll in the Micronesia subregion of the Pacific Ocean. The atoll is composed of three islets – Wake, Wilkes, and Peale Islands – surrounding a lagoon encircled by a coral reef. The nearest inhabited island is Utirik Atoll in the Marshall Islands, located 592 miles (953 kilometers) to the southeast.

The island may have been found by prehistoric Austronesian mariners before its first recorded discovery by Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira in 1568. Ships continued visiting the area in the following centuries, but the island remained undeveloped until the United States claimed it in 1899. Significant development of the island did not begin until 1935 when Pan American Airways constructed an airfield and hotel, establishing Wake Island as a stopover for trans-Pacific flying boat routes. In December 1941 at the opening of the Pacific Theatre of World War II Japan seized the island, which remained under Japanese occupation until the end of the war in September 1945. In 1972, Pan American Airways ceased using the island for trans-Pacific layovers, instead using Boeing 747 aircraft, which could cross the ocean without stopping. With the withdrawal of Pan American Airways, the island's administration was taken over by the United States Air Force, which later used the atoll as a processing location for Vietnamese refugees during Operation New Life in 1975.

A laser weapon is a type of directed-energy weapon that uses lasers to inflict damage. Whether they will be deployed as practical, high-performance military weapons remains to be seen. One of the major issues with laser weapons is atmospheric thermal blooming, which is still largely unsolved. This issue is exacerbated when there is fog, smoke, dust, rain, snow, smog, foam, or purposely dispersed obscurant chemicals present. In essence, a laser generates a beam of light that requires clear air or a vacuum to operate.

Laser-based directed energy weapons generally have two primary types: low-power laser dazzlers that blind optical systems or human eyes, and high-power lasers that can physically damage or destroy targets, such as enemy aircraft and ammunition.

Landing gear is the undercarriage of an aircraft or spacecraft that is used for engaging the surface — typically land, but may also be the surface of a water body — when parking, taxiing, takeoff or landing. It was also formerly called alighting gear by some manufacturers, such as the Glenn L. Martin Company. For aircraft, Stinton makes the terminology distinction undercarriage (British) = landing gear (US).

For aircraft, landing gear is the foundational part of airframe that supports the craft's weight when it is not in flight, keeping the fuselage at a clearance off the ground so it can avoid sustaining frictional/collisional damages. Wheeled landing gear is the most ubiquitous, used in almost all aircraft that perform conventional and short takeoff and landing, while skids or floats are used in aircraft that can take off and land vertically or operate from snow/ice/water. Landing gears from early aircraft are usually fixed, and remain protruded under the aircraft during flight, with no or only partial fairing coverage to reduce drag; while most modern aircraft have retractable undercarriages that fold into the fuselage during flight, which maximizes aerodynamic streamlining and allows for faster airspeeds and smoother flight control.

Operation Solomon (Hebrew: מבצע שלמה, Mivtza Shlomo) was a covert Israeli military operation from May 24 to 25, 1991, to airlift Ethiopian Jews to Israel. Non-stop flights of 35 Israeli aircraft, including Israeli Air Force C-130s and El Al Boeing 747s, transported 14,325 Ethiopian Jews to Israel in 36 hours. One of the aircraft, an El Al 747, carried at least 1,088 people, including two babies who were born on the flight, and holds the world record for the most passengers on an aircraft. Eight children were born during the airlift process.

It was the third Aliyah mission from Ethiopia to Israel. Before the mission, there were two similar operations called Operation Moses and Operation Joshua, which were the alternative ways that Ethiopian Jews could leave before they were forced to put an end to these types of programs. In between the time when these operations came to an end and Operation Solomon began, a very small number of Ethiopian Jews were able to leave and go to Israel.

Joseph Frederick Sutter (March 21, 1921 – August 30, 2016) was an American engineer for the Boeing Airplane Company and manager of the design team for the Boeing 747 under Malcolm T. Stamper, the head of the 747 project. Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine has described Sutter as the "father of the 747".

The Boeing Everett Factory, officially the Everett Production Facility, is an airplane assembly facility operated by Boeing in Everett, Washington, United States. It sits on the north side of Paine Field and includes the largest building in the world by volume at over 472 million cubic feet (13,400,000 m), which covers 98.3 acres (39.8 ha).

The entire complex covers approximately 1,000 acres (400 ha) and spans both sides of State Route 526 (named the Boeing Freeway). The factory was built in 1967 for the Boeing 747 and has since been expanded several times to accommodate new airliners, including the 767, 777, and 787 programs. More than 5,000 widebody aircraft have been built at the Everett factory since it opened.

Juan Terry Trippe (June 27, 1899 – April 3, 1981) was an American commercial aviation pioneer, entrepreneur and the founder of Pan American World Airways, one of the iconic airlines of the 20th century. He was involved in the introduction of the Sikorsky S-42, which opened trans-Pacific airline travel; the Boeing 307 Stratoliner, which introduced cabin pressurization to airline operations; the Boeing 707, which started a new era in low-cost jet transportation; and the Boeing 747 jumbo jets. He also founded InterContinental Hotels & Resorts.

The Space Shuttle orbiter is the spaceplane component of the Space Shuttle, a partially reusable orbital spacecraft system that was part of the discontinued Space Shuttle program. Operated from 1981 to 2011 by NASA, the U.S. space agency, this vehicle could carry astronauts and payloads into low Earth orbit, perform in-space operations, then re-enter the atmosphere and land as a glider, returning its crew and any on-board payload to the Earth.

Six orbiters were built for flight: Enterprise, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour. All were built in Palmdale, California, by the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania-based Rockwell International company's North American Aircraft Operations branch. The first orbiter, Enterprise, made its maiden flight in 1977. An unpowered glider, it was carried by a modified Boeing 747 airliner called the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft and released for a series of atmospheric test flights and landings. Enterprise was partially disassembled and retired after completion of critical testing. The remaining orbiters were fully operational spacecraft, and were launched vertically as part of the Space Shuttle stack.

The Airbus A380 is a large wide-body airliner, developed and produced by Airbus until 2021. It is the world's largest passenger airliner and the only full-length double-deck jet airliner.

Airbus studies started in 1988, and the project was announced in 1990 to challenge the dominance of the Boeing 747 in the long-haul market. The then-designated A3XX project was presented in 1994 and Airbus launched the €9.5 billion (US$10.7 billion) A380 programme on 19 December 2000. The first prototype was unveiled in Toulouse, France on 18 January 2005, commencing its first flight on 27 April 2005. It then obtained its type certificate from the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on 12 December 2006.

The Boeing 747-400 is a large, long-range wide-body airliner produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes, as an advanced version of the original Boeing 747.The model was first introduced as the Advanced Series 300 was announced at the September 1984 Farnborough Airshow, targeting a 10% cost reduction with more efficient engines and 1,000 nautical miles [nmi] (1,900 km; 1,200 mi). Northwest Airlines became the launch customer with an order for ten aircraft on October 22, 1985. The first 747-400 was rolled out on January 26, 1988, made its maiden flight on April 29, 1988, received type certification on January 9, 1989, and entered service with Northwest a month later on February 9, 1989.

It retains the 747 airframe, including the 747-300 stretched upper deck, with 6-foot (1.8 m) winglets. The 747-400 offers a choice of improved turbofans: the Pratt & Whitney PW4000, General Electric CF6-80C2 or Rolls-Royce RB211-524G/H. Its two-crew glass cockpit dispenses with the need for a flight engineer. It typically accommodates 416 passengers in a three-class layout over a 7,285 nmi (13,492 km; 8,383 mi) range with its 875,000-pound (397 t) maximum takeoff weight (MTOW).