2001 in aviation

Years in aviation:	1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004
Centuries:	20th Century · 21st century · 22nd century
Decades:	1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2020s 2030s
Years:	1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004

This is a list of aviation-related events from 2001:

[edit] Events

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 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.

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.

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 hanger 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 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).