March 4
Adventurer Steve Fossett achieves his dream - Around the World in 3 days non-stop to be the first person to circumnavigate the Globe SOLO
 
Steve departed Salina Municipal Airport in Kansas on Monday at 6:47pm (local) and landed back at Salina at 1:48pm on Thursday (Friday 5:48am QLD local)

The Burt Rutan designed jet powered GlobalFlyer covered 19,880 nautical miles, about 17 nautical more than required - the distance required needed to be equal to or greater than the Tropic of Cancer
 
Flight time was 67 hours 1 minute and 46 seconds

Mission Control web site - www.globalflyer.com - had a significant increase in traffic once Steve departed and site managers upgraded the capacity to meet the huge demand
 
The site was getting about 150,000 visits a day prior to launch - a week before launch date it jumped to 250,000 hits and on Monday the site got 2.8 million visits and in the first 24 hours after Steve Fossett departed another 8 million visits were logged

The non-stop circumnavigation has been done before - 19 years ago in fact - but not solo
 
Burt's brother Dick and Jeana Yeager (no relation to Chuck of Sound Barrier Fame) flew the Voyager - a twin engine machine similar in design layout to GlobalFlyer - in a 9 day global journey using only one of the engines for most of the flight to conserve fuel

February 4
The owner and managing director of West OZe's Air Australia ended up upside-down in the front yard of a Perth suburban South Lake property after an apparent engine failure in the 2 seat aerobatic Robin sport aircraft he was flying
 
Media reports have the Robin loosing power on approach to Jandakot Airport resulting in the forced landing in a suburban street

 
The US Navy trained and Chief Flying Instructor of Air OZ apparently did not see the power line during the ensuring landing that snagged a wing resulting in significant damage to the aircraft as it ended up inverted on the front lawn
 
The pilot - the only person on board - was able to walk away from the accident with only minor head injuries