This is a list of aviation-related events in 2013.
Events
January
4 January A Britten-Norman BN-2 Islander carrying the head of the Missoni fashion house, Vittorio Missoni, and five other people on a domestic flight from Los Roques to Simón Bolívar International Airport outside Caracas, Venezuela, disappears over the Caribbean Sea south of Los Roques.
16 January During a domestic flight from Yamaguchi, Japan, to Haneda Airport in Tokyo, All Nippon Airways Flight 692, a Boeing 787 Dreamliner, makes an emergency landing at Takamatsu Airport in Takamatsu after cockpit warning lights indicate a battery failure and the presence of smoke; one passenger is injured during the evacuation of the plane. Because of this incident and several others in recent days involving fuel leaks, a battery fire, a wiring problem, a glitch in the computer controlling the brakes, and a cracked cockpit window in various Boeing 787s around the world, All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines both ground their Dreamliner fleets. Later in the day, the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration grounds all Boeing 787s in the United States.Halsey, Ashley III, The Washington Post, 17 January 2013, p. A14.
17 January The European Aviation Safety Agency endorses the Federal Aviation Administrations grounding of Boeing 787 Dreamliners.Halsey, Ashley III, "," The Washington Post, 17 January 2013, p. A14. By the end of the day, Dreamliners have been grounded worldwide pending investigation of the possibility of a fire hazard posed by their lithium-ion batteries.
28 January Italys highest criminal court rules that "ample and congruent" evidence exists to make it "abundantly" clear that a missile shot down Itavia Flight 870 over the Mediterranean Sea in June 1980 and orders the Government of Italy to pay damages to the families of the victims.
29 January SCAT Airlines Flight 760, a Bombardier CRJ200, crashes in thick fog near Kyzyltu, Kazakhstan, short of the runway at Almaty, killing all 21 people on board.
31 January The bankrupt Indonesian airline Batavia Air ceases operations and goes into liquidation.
February India's Kingfisher Airlines ceases all corporate operations due to financial difficulties. It had suspended flight operations in October 2012.
1 February Malaysia Airlines joins the Oneworld airline alliance.
13 February South Airlines Flight 8971, an Antonov An-24 with 52 people on board, overshoots the runway and crash-lands while attempting to make an emergency landing in fog at Donetsk International Airport in Donetsk, Ukraine, killing five people.
14 February American Airlines and US Airways announce an $11,000,000,000 deal to merge, creating the worlds largest airline, with 900 planes, 3,200 daily flights, and 95,000 employees. Under the deal, former US Airways management will dominate the merged airline, but the "US Airways" brand will disappear.
16 February Iraqi Airways begins flights to Kuwait for the first time since Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990.
18 February After cutting a hole in a perimeter fence at Brussels Airport outside Brussels, Belgium, eight armed and masked men dressed as police officers drive in two vehicles displaying flashing blue lights onto the tarmac and confront guards loading a cargo of diamonds onto Helvetic Airways Flight LX789, a Fokker 100 passenger jet packed with passengers and preparing for departure for a flight to Zurich, Switzerland. They steal 120 small packages containing a combined $50,000,000 (£32,000,000) worth of diamonds in a three-minute robbery and escape via the same hole in the fence without firing a shot.
26 February A fire starts aboard the Ultramagic N-425 hot-air balloon SU-283 while it is attempting to land near Luxor, Egypt, carrying 19 tourists, a tour guide, and its pilot. The pilot and one tourist leap from the balloon and suffer serious injuries before the balloon, with the other 19 people still aboard, rises rapidly to an altitude of about , experiences an explosion heard several kilometers away, collapses, crashes to the ground, and suffers another explosion. The 19 people still aboard, seven of whom jump to their deaths to escape the fire, are killed. It is the deadliest hot-air balloon accident in history, exceeding the death toll in a 1989 accident in Australia.
March
Lion Air and Airbus sign the most valuable commercial order in history, a $23,800,000,000 Lion Air order for 234 Airbus A320 airliners. It exceeds the previous most valuable order, a $22,400,000,000 order by Lion Air for 230 airliners from Boeing in 2011. Evergreen International Aviation sells its subsidiary Evergreen Helicopters to Erickson Air-Crane.
4 March Two minutes from touchdown at Goma International Airport, the Compagnie Africaine d'Aviation Fokker 50 9Q-CBD crashes in bad weather in an empty lot in Goma, Democratic Republic of the Congo, killing six of the people on board and injuring all three survivors.
22 March The Malaysian low-cost airline Malindo Air makes its first flights.
25 March Boeing makes the first of two Boeing 787 Dreamliner test flights to show that modifications to the 787's lithium-ion battery system have solved the problem of battery overheating experienced by Dreamliners earlier in the year. The aircraft, bearing the livery of LOT Polish Airlines, departs from Paine Field in Everett, Washington, flies south down the coast of Washington and halfway down the coast of Oregon, and makes a low-altitude, low-speed circle over the Strait of Juan de Fuca before returning without incident.Reuters, "Boeing Makes First of Two 787 Dreamliner Flight Checks," The Washington Post, 26 March 2013, p. A16.
28 March Two United States Air Force B-2 Spirit bombers make the first nonstop B-2 flight to and from the Korean Peninsula, departing Whiteman Air Force Base, Missouri, bombing a target range on a South Korean island, and returning in a 37-hour flight. The flight, part of the annual Foal Eagle field training exercise, is intended to signal American support to South Korea in the face of belligerent North Korean rhetoric. The low-cost Indian-Malaysian airline AirAsia India is founded. It will begin flight operations in June 2014.
31 March Austrian Airlines retires the "Lauda Air" brand. Austrian Airlines and Lauda Air had merged in July 2012. A United States Marine Corps pilot makes the first vertical landing in a production Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II.Guttman, Robert, "Vertical Dreams," Aviation History, March 2016, p. 35 (photo caption).
April Bankrupt Aerosvit Airlines ceases operations. Some of its fleet is transferred to Ukraine International Airlines. Meridiana Fly completes its merger with Air Italy and is renamed Meridiana.
5 April Boeing makes the second of two Boeing 787 Dreamliner test flights to show that modifications to the 787s lithium-ion battery system have solved the problem of battery overheating experienced by Dreamliners earlier in the year. The aircraft, bearing the livery of LOT Polish Airlines, makes a 755-mile (1,216-kilometer) flight along the West Coast of the United States in just under two hours without incident. The completion of two successful test flights is a major step toward ending the worldwide grounding of 787s.Reuters, "Boeing's Dreamliner Passes Test Flight," The Washington Post, 6 April 2013, p. A8.
7 April A Helicópteros del Pacífico (Helipac) Mil Mi-8P registration OB-1916-P crashes en route from Iquitos to a Perenco site near the Curaray River, in the Loreto Region of Peru. All 13 people on board died.
13 April Lion Air Flight 904, a Boeing 737-8GP carrying 108 people, ditches in shallow water off Bali from the runway while attempting to land at Ngurah Rai International Airport in Denpasar, Indonesia. All on board survive, although 22 people are injured.
27 April The Boeing 787 Dreamliner makes its first passenger-carrying flight since the worldwide grounding of Dreamliners in January 2013, when a packed Ethiopian Airlines 787 flies from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to Nairobi, Kenya. Boeing vice president Randy Tinseth is among the passengers.
29 April National Airlines Flight 102, a Boeing 747-428BCF cargo aircraft, crashes just after takeoff from Bagram Airfield in Bagram, Afghanistan, after its crew reported that its cargo of five heavy military vehicles had shifted and caused the aircraft to stall. Its entire crew of seven dies in the crash. Virgin Galactics commercial spacecraft SpaceShipTwo makes its first powered flight. Released by its jet-powered mothership White Knight Two after a 45-minute climb at an altitude of over the Mojave Desert, SpaceShipTwo burns its engine for 16 seconds, climbing to and reaching a speed of Mach 1.2 before gliding to a landing at Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, California, after 10 minutes of independent flight. Mark Stuckey is the pilot and Mike Alsbury the co-pilot for the flight.
May
1 May A Boeing X-51A WaveRider unmanned scramjet demonstration aircraft detaches from a Boeing B-52H Stratofortress and reaches Mach 4.8 () powered by a booster rocket. It then separates cleanly from the booster, ignites its own engine, accelerates to Mach 5.1 (), and flies for 240 seconds – setting the record for the longest air-breathing hypersonic flight in history – before running out of fuel and plunging into the Pacific Ocean off Point Mugu, California, after transmitting 370 seconds of telemetry. The flight – the fourth and last planned X-51A test flight and the first successful one – completes the X-51 program.Anonymous, "WaveRider Goes Hypersonic," Aviation History, September 2013, p. 12.
3 May Batik Air, a full-service airline owned by Lion Air, makes its first flight.
4 May The first Solar Impulse aircraft, HB-SIA, the world's first solar powered aircraft capable of operating day and night, completes the first leg of its attempt to become the solar-powered aircraft to fly across the continental United States, landing at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix, Arizona, at 12:30 a.m. PDT after departing Moffett Field in Mountain View, California, at dawn on 3 May and covering in 18 hours 18 minutes at an average speed-over-ground of . Plans call for the aircraft, which requires no fuel because it uses photovoltaic cells in its wings to supply it with power and charge its batteries for use at night, to make a series of five flights of 19 to 25 hours each, flying at about , with a stopover of approximately 10 days in each city it visits, culminating in an arrival at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, New York.
16 May Nepal Airlines Flight 555, the de Havilland Canada DHC-6 Twin Otter 9N-ABO, skids off the runway at Jomsom Airport in Jomsom, Nepal, and falls into the Gandaki River. All 21 people on board survive, but seven suffer serious injuries.
20 May Passenger-carrying flights of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner resume in the United States as United Airlines Flight 1 flies from Houston, Texas, to Chicago, Illinois. United, which plans to resume international 787 service on 10 June, becomes the fourth airline to resume Dreamliner flights, after Ethiopian Airlines, Qatar Airways, and Air India.Associated Press, "News Summary: United Airlines Resumes 787 Flying After 4-Month Halt," washingtonpost.com, 20 May 2013, 3:14 p.m. EDT.
27 May TACA Airlines leaves the Star Alliance.
June AirAsia exits its investment in the first incarnation of AirAsia Japan, leaving AirAsia Japan as a wholly owned subsidiary of All Nippon Airways.
11 June Air traffic controllers in France begin a strike to protest European Union plans to reorganize and privatize air traffic control over Europe.
12 June In response to a call for industrial action by the European Transport Workers' Federation, air traffic controllers in 11 other countries engage in lower-key industrial actions in sympathy with the French strike, although flights are not disrupted in other countries.
13 June