SpaceShipOne One of the latest aviation firsts to come out of the high desert of California was the joint venture of Burt Rutan and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. On October 4th, 2005, the anniversary of Sputnik, SpaceShipOne won the $10 million dollar X-Prize being the first private manned spacecraft.

John F. Kennedy Jr. In the words of Ted Kennedy, "We dared to think, in that other Irish phrase, that this John Kennedy would live to comb gray hair, with his beloved Carolyn by his side. But, like his father, he had every gift but length of years. "A wrongful death lawsuit brought by the Bessette family against the Kennedy estate concluded with an undisclosed out of court settlement. The settlement avoided the publicity of a public trial. (source Wikipedia)

Blink 182 Drummer Travis Barker Learjet On September 19, 2008,Travis Barker was injured when the Learjet 60 in which he was a passenger crashed outside of Columbia, South Carolina. The jet was headed for Van Nuys, California. According to the Federal Aviation Administration; the plane was departing the airport when air traffic controllers saw sparks emanating from the plane. It went off the runway, smashed through a fence, crossed a nearby road, slammed into an embankment and caught fire. (source Wikipedia)

Steve Fossett On September 3, 2007, Fossett was reported missing after the plane he was flying over the Nevada desert failed to return.[2] Despite a month of searches by the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) and others, Fossett could not be found, and the search by CAP was called off on October 2, 2007. Privately funded and privately directed search efforts continued, but after a request from Fossett's wife, he was declared legally dead on February 15, 2008. On September 29, 2008, a hiker found Fossett's identification cards in the Sierra Nevada Mountains in California, and the crash site was discovered a few days later. On November 3, 2008, DNA test results conducted on bones recovered near the site of the crash confirmed his death, which some have indicated would have happened immediately upon impact of the plane. According to interviews by the Discovery Channel (who provided a camera crew the day after his FAA ID and $1005 were found by a hiker) the one fact that disputes the official findings was the location of hardware that had been part of the pilot's harness. The pilots who knew him and that the Discovery Channel interviewed for the special about him (aired January 15, 2009, near 8:30 AM GMT), expressed certainty that the harness could not have been released by any animal that may have moved his body. The reason for their opinion pertains to the mechanism (unscrewing) required to release the harness, and the fact that no other hardware was attached. However, there is no proof that this harness was in use or being worn at the time of the crash. (source Wikipedia)

Cory Lidle Lidle was the third Yankees player to die in a crash of a plane owned by the player. The preceding two were catcher Thurman Munson (died August 2, 1979) and pitcher Jim Hardin (died March 9, 1991). In an interview shortly before his death, he responded to concerns about player-pilots, like Munson, by insisting that his plane was safe, being equipped with a parachute for the entire plane. The SR20 includes the Cirrus Aircraft Parachute System, which is designed to help save the crew in case of an in-flight loss of aircraft control, but offers only minimal protection against controlled flight into terrain. It is reported that the parachute was not deployed, nor would it have prevented this type of accident. (source wikipedia)

Captain Sully's Airbus On January 15th 2009 a living legend was created when multiple birds were ingested by the engines on U.S. Airways flight 1549. With the near total loss of power, the skill and intuition of the crew Capt. Chesley Sullenberger and Co-Pilot Jeffery Skiles brought the Airbus into the Hudson River for a successful ditching without a single loss of life. They now share the ranks with other commercial aviation heroes such as Al Haynes who helped limit the loss of life at Sioux City, Iowa in 1989.

Jack Roush Upon arrival at the 2010 EAA Airventure in Oshkosh, WI Jack Roush lost directional control of his 2007 Beech Premier jet on landing. He survived along with the passenger Brenda Strickland. The cat in the hat is using his 9 lives, with a prior crash in 2002 in an ultra light that crashed in a lake.

Sen. Ted Stevens and Michael O'Keefe
DeHaviland Turbine Beaver On August 9, 2010 A DeHaviland Turbine Beaver impacted terrain while enroute to a fishing lodge. Alaska state senator Ted Stevens was killed, and a notable surviving passenger Michael O'Keefe the former head of NASA. The event sparked much debate over CFIT or Controlled Flight Into Terrain. The pilot was highly experienced, the aircraft had been modernized, and yet for reasons unknown it struck a mountain slope without warning.

Jessica Dubroff, 7  Cheyenne, WY Joe Reed the instructor hired to accompany the Sea to Shining Sea flight is quoted as saying, “it’s a non event for aviation, simply flying cross country with a 7 year old and her parents paying for it”. And indeed it was. There was and still is no formal record keeping for achievements by young aviators and generally discouraged for safety. In fact it was reported the “young pilot slept “on one of the legs outbound east to Cheyenne.  The “non event” became a huge media circus, and pressures to meet media time schedules impaired pilot decision making. Jessica’s father was also a pilot, and rode along in the back seat. ABC news provided him a camera to document the journey. Looking past the facts, some fifteen years later we can watch the interviews and videos of the young aviatrix. What I saw beyond the spotlights glare was a lot of what I see on my local airports, and how I was as a child. I can see the curiosity of flight she saw, I can see her happy to be hanging out on the airport. While her flight will be forever documented as an example of how small factors compound into an accident, it should not be forgotten that initial wonder of flight most of us discovered.

Jeffery Ethell, P-38 Lightning, Author The “Fighter Writer”, if you've been in aviation any amount of time you likely have a volume or two of his work. Widely experienced with approximately two hundred unique aircraft flown he was an icon in the warbird circles.