This is a list of aviation-related events from 1985.

Years in aviation: 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988
Centuries: 19th century · 20th century · 21st century
Decades: 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s
Years: 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988

Events

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January

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February

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March

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  • In the Iran–Iraq War, Iraqi Air Force aircraft carry out 158 sorties against Iranian cities over a three-day period.[7]
  • March 1 – The Boy Scouts of America officially ends powered aircraft flight in its Aviation Exploring program, citing difficulties with maintaining insurance coverage in the event of an aircraft accident. The decision affects 450 Explorer Posts and over 10,000 Explorer Scouts.
  • March 4 – The Iraqi Air Force conducts its first raid against the Iranian nuclear reactor under construction at Bushehr.[8]
  • March 10–11 – Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force aircraft conduct the first air raid against Baghdad in months. The Iraqi Air Force retaliates with a raid on Tehran.[9]
  • March 11–18 – A fully committed Iraqi Air Force flies 150 to 200 sorties a day as Iraq turns back an Iranian offensive out of the Hawizeh Marshes.[9]
  • March 19–23 – Iraqi strike aircraft and helicopters join artillery in employing mustard gas to halt an Iranian offensive in the Majnoon area.[10]
  • March 22 – In Operation Joshua, also known as Operation Sheba, six United States Air Force C-130 Hercules aircraft airlift around 500 Jews of the Beta Israel community who had fled a famine in Ethiopia and were living in refugee camps in Sudan. Taking the refugees aboard near Al Qadarif, Sudan, the aircraft fly them to Uvda Airbase in southern Israel.
  • March 25 – The Emirates airline is founded in Dubai, UAE.
  • March 29 – Ten service personnel are killed when two Canadian military planes collide at CFB Edmonton during a mass flyover.[11]
  • March 31
    • Kemayoran Airport in Jakarta, Indonesia, closes. The city's new main airport, Soekarno–Hatta International Airport, opens simultaneously.
    • Iraq claims to have hit about 30 ships in air attacks in the Persian Gulf since January 1, while Iran has hit seven over the same time period. Some estimates place the number of Iraqi attacks since March 1984 at 65 and Iranian attacks over the same period at 25.[12]

April

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June

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1985 Frankfurt Airport bombing.

July

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August

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August 1985 remains commercial aviation's deadliest month for passengers and crew (a distinction from the non-passenger fatalities of the September 11, 2001 attacks) in history.

September

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October

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November

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December

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  • December 12 – Arrow Air Flight 1285R, a chartered McDonnell Douglas DC-8-63CF, crashes shortly after takeoff from Gander, Newfoundland (now Newfoundland and Labrador), while taking 248 soldiers of the United States Army's 101st Airborne Division from West Germany to the United States for Christmas, killing all 256 people on board.
  • December 19 – Yakutsk United Air Group Flight 101/435, an Antonov An-24 with 51 people on board making a domestic flight in the Soviet Union from Yakutsk to Chita, is hijacked by its co-pilot, Shamil Alimuradov, who is armed with a hatchet. He orders it to land in the People's Republic of China, and Soviet authorities give the airliner the radio frequency for Qiqihar Airport in Qiqihar, China. Alimuraov insisted that the An-24 land at Hailar, China, instead; the airliner runs out of fuel before it can reach Hailar and makes an emergency landing in a rice field, where Chinese authorities arrest Alimuradov. The passengers and other crew members will fly back to the Soviet Union on December 21 in a Tupolev Tu-134 they meet at Harbin, China, and the An-24 flies back to the Soviet Union in January 1986.[30]
  • December 27 – Using assault rifles and hand grenades, four men attack the ticket counter El Al and Trans World Airlines share at Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport outside Rome, Italy, and a few minutes later three others attack the El Al ticket counter at Vienna International Airport in Vienna, Austria, killing a combined total of 19 people and wounding about 140 at the two airports. Police kill three of the Rome attackers and one of the attackers in Vienna, and the rest are arrested in both cities. The Abu Nidal Organization claims credit for the attacks.[31]
  • December 31
    • The Iraqi Air Force claims to have flown 20,011 sorties against Iran, to have made 77 destructive hits on the Iranian oil terminal at Kharg Island, and to have hit 124 "hostile maritime targets" in the Persian Gulf; Iraq will declare 1985 "The Year of the Pilot." Some reports indicate that Iran has carried out a total of 60 air raids against Kharg Island, and the Iraqi Air Force has attacked more than 200 ships in the Persian Gulf since beginning such attacks in May 1981, with over 150 of those attacks occurring since March 1985.[32] Iraq claims to have bombed Tehran 30 times during 1985.[33]
    • During 1985, Iraq has made 33 air attacks against shipping in the Persian Gulf, one using bombs and the remainder using air-to-surface missiles, while Iran has conducted 10 air attacks against Persian Gulf shipping. The total of Iraqi air attacks against Persian Gulf shipping since 1984 has reached 68, one using bombs and the rest air-to-surface missiles, while Iran's total since 1984 has reached 28.[34]
    • American singer-songwriter and actor Ricky Nelson and six others die in the crash of a Douglas DC-3 near DeKalb, Texas.

First flights

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February

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March

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July

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August

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September

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October

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December

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Entered service

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June

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December

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Deadliest crash

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1985 remains one of the deadliest years in aviation history. The deadliest of this year was Japan Airlines Flight 123, a Boeing 747 which crashed in mountainous terrain in Gunma prefecture, Japan, on 12 August, killing 520 of the 524 people on board; the accident was the deadliest of the 1980s decade, and remains the deadliest single-aircraft accident in aviation history. The second deadliest of the 1980s took place only weeks before, when Air India Flight 182, also a Boeing 747, was destroyed by a terrorist bomb over the Atlantic Ocean west of Ireland on 23 June, killing all 329 people on board. August 1985 remains the worst single month for commercial aviation fatalities in history. Largely accounting for Flights 123, 182 and the 12 December crash of Arrow Air Flight 1285R (256 fatalities), a total of 2,010 people were killed in commercial aviation accidents in 1985; the second highest in commercial aviation history since 1942; only 1972 had more fatalities (2,373).[41]

References

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  1. ^ Cordesman, Anthony H., and Abraham R. Wagner, The Lessons of Modern War, Volume II: The Iran-Iraq War, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1990, ISBN 0-8133-1330-9, p. 217.
  2. ^ "38 killed in crash at airport". The News and Courier. January 21, 1985. Retrieved June 1, 2011.
  3. ^ TWA History Timeline Archived April 10, 2015, at the Wayback Machine
  4. ^ globalsecurity.org ETOPS: Extended Range Operation with Two-Engine Airplanes
  5. ^ "Accident description". Aviation Safety Network. Retrieved July 21, 2014.
  6. ^ a b c d e planecrashinfo.com Famous People Who Died in Aviation Accidents: 1980s
  7. ^ a b Cordesman, Anthony H., and Abraham R. Wagner, The Lessons of Modern War, Volume II: The Iran-Iraq War, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1990, ISBN 0-8133-1330-9, p. 206.
  8. ^ Cordesman and Wagner, p. 521.
  9. ^ a b Cordesman and Wagner, p. 202.
  10. ^ Cordesman and Wagner, p. 203.
  11. ^ Canada. Parliament. House of Commons. Standing Committee on External Affairs and International Trade (1984). Minutes of Proceedings and Evidence of the Standing Committee on External Affairs and International Trade. Queen's Printer = Imprimeur de la reine. p. 4.
  12. ^ Cordesman and Wagner, p. 205.
  13. ^ Polmar, Norman, "Stars of David and Red Stars," Naval History, February 2013, p. 12.
  14. ^ Polmar, Norman, "Stars of David and Red Stars," Naval History, February 2013, p. 13.
  15. ^ Account of incident from USA Today.
  16. ^ Stevens, William K. (May 14, 1983). "Police Drop Bomb on Radicals' Home in Philadelphia". New York Times. Archived from the original on June 12, 2012. Retrieved August 31, 2012.
  17. ^ Frank Trippett (May 27, 1985). "It Looks Just Like a War Zone". TIME magazine. Archived from the original on December 3, 2007. Retrieved February 15, 2009.
  18. ^ a b c Cordesman, Anthony H., and Abraham R. Wagner, The Lessons of Modern War, Volume II: The Iran-Iraq War, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1990, ISBN 0-8133-1330-9, p. 209.
  19. ^ Revista cubana de derecho (in Spanish). Instituto Cubano del Libro. 1989. p. 216.
  20. ^ Robert Gearty (September 21, 2019), "Greek police arrest suspect in 1985 TWA Flight 847 hijacking", Fox News, retrieved September 21, 2019
  21. ^ Tjomsland, Audun & Wilsberg, Kjell (1996). Braathens SAFE 50 år: Mot alle odds. Oslo. p. 279. ISBN 82-990400-1-9.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  22. ^ United States. President's Commission on Aviation Security and Terrorism (1990). Report to the President. The Commission. p. 168.
  23. ^ Roach, Kent (2011). "The Air India Report and the Regulation of Charities and Terrorism Financing". The University of Toronto Law Journal. 61 (1): 46. doi:10.3138/utlj.61.1.045. JSTOR 23018688.
  24. ^ a b c d Cordesman, Anthony H., and Abraham R. Wagner, The Lessons of Modern War, Volume II: The Iran-Iraq War, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1990, ISBN 0-8133-1330-9, p. 211.
  25. ^ Grier, Peter, "The Flying Tomato Can," Air Force Magazine, February 2009.
  26. ^ Dr. Raymond L. Puffer, The Death of a Satellite, [1], Retrieved on November 3, 2007.
  27. ^ a b Cordesman, Anthony H., and Abraham R. Wagner, The Lessons of Modern War, Volume II: The Iran-Iraq War, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1990, ISBN 0-8133-1330-9, pp. 211–212.
  28. ^ Gardiner, Robert, Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1947–1982, Part One: The Western Powers, Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press, 1983, ISBN 0-87021-918-9, p. 66.
  29. ^ Cordesman, Anthony H., and Abraham R. Wagner, The Lessons of Modern War, Volume II: The Iran-Iraq War, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1990, ISBN 0-8133-1330-9, p. 212.
  30. ^ "Passengers, Crew in Soviet Hijacking All Safe". Los Angeles Times. December 26, 1985. Retrieved July 10, 2014.
  31. ^ Anonymous, "Today in History," The Washington Post Express, December 27, 2012, p. 22.
  32. ^ Cordesman, Anthony H., and Abraham R. Wagner, The Lessons of Modern War, Volume II: The Iran-Iraq War, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1990, ISBN 0-8133-1330-9, pp. 211, 212.
  33. ^ Cordesman, Anthony H., and Abraham R. Wagner, The Lessons of Modern War, Volume II: The Iran-Iraq War, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1990, ISBN 0-8133-1330-9, p. 279.
  34. ^ Cordesman, Anthony H., and Abraham R. Wagner, The Lessons of Modern War, Volume II: The Iran-Iraq War, Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1990, ISBN 0-8133-1330-9, pp. 339.
  35. ^ Taylor 1986, pp. 202–203
  36. ^ a b Taylor 1985, p. [67]
  37. ^ Taylor 1986, p. 278
  38. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Taylor 1986, p. [67]
  39. ^ "T-46A is flown". Flight International October 26, 1985, p. 8.
  40. ^ Donald, David, ed., The Complete Encyclopedia of World Aircraft, New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1997, ISBN 0-7607-0592-5, p. 23.
  41. ^ "Infographic: People killed in commercial plane crashes since 1942". March 24, 2015.