This is a list of aviation-related events from 1948:
Events Publication of Nevil Shute's novel No Highway set in the world of research into aviation safety. The United States Air Force has 20,800 aircraft, about half of them combat aircraft, down from 68,400 aircraft at the end of World War II in 1945. U.S. Air Force personnel strength stands at 387,000. The United States inventory of atomic bombs reaches 50 weapons during the year. Each requires two days to assemble for use, and by mid-1948 the United States has only two bomb assembly teams. Faced with deep disagreement within the United States Armed Forces over their appropriate roles in national defense, United States Secretary of Defense James V. Forrestal orders Chief of Staff of the United States Army General Omar N. Bradley, Chief of Naval Operations Louis E. Denfield, and Chief of Staff of the United States Air Force General Carl A. Spaatz to meet at Key West, Florida, in March and at Newport, Rhode Island, in August to determine "who will do what with what." A proposal that the U.S. Air Force take responsibility for strategic air warfare and that the United States Navy "conduct...air operations necessary for the accomplishments of objectives in a naval campaign" and participate in an overall air campaign "as directed by the Joint Chiefs of Staff" fails when the Air Force insists on clear and exclusive control of the strategic role and the Navy refuses to agree. Under a contract with the Chinese Nationalist Air Force, Transocean Air Lines ferries 157 Curtiss C-46 Commando transport aircraft from California to Shanghai. Transocean refits each C-46 with additional fuel tanks to extend its range to and flies it to China via Honolulu, Wake Island, Guam, and Okinawa. The Pitcairn Autogiro Company is dissolved. Summer – American intelligence analysts forecast that in 1957 the Soviet Union will have 15,000 combat aircraft.
January January 6 – An Air France Douglas DC-3D (registration F-BAXC) strikes trees during an approach in bad weather to Paris-Le Bourget Airport in Paris, France, and crashes in Gonesse, killing all 16 people on board. January 7 – Both engines of a Coastal Air Lines Douglas C-47A Skytrain (registration NC60331) shut down during a flight from Raleigh-Durham Airport in North Carolina to Miami, Florida. While the crew attempts to glide the aircraft to an emergency landing in a marsh, the aircraft stalls, crashes north-northeast of Savannah, Georgia, and breaks in two, killing 18 of the 27 people on board. January 11 – After a Dominicana de Aviación Douglas C-47 Skytrain (registration HI-6) carrying the B.B.C. Santiago baseball team home on a domestic flight in the Dominican Republic from Barahona to Santiago de los Caballeros encounters bad weather, its crew makes a navigational error while attempting to divert to Ciudad Trujillo. The aircraft crashes into a mountain near Yamasá, killing all 32 people on board. January 17 – BOAC begins to replace its Boeing 314 flying boats with the Lockheed Constellation on the Baltimore, Maryland-to-Bermuda route. January 20 – A China National Aviation Corporation (CNAC) Curtiss C-46 Commando evacuating people from Mukden, China, crashes while taking off from Mukden Airport in a snowstorm, killing 11 of the 54 people on board. January 28 – An Airline Transport Carriers Douglas C-47B Skytrain under contract to the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service crashes in the Diablo Mountains west of Coalinga, California, killing all 32 people on board. Among the dead are 28 Mexican migrant farm workers being deported to Mexico, leading singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie to write the protest song "Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)". January 30 British South American Airways Avro Tudor IV Star Tiger (G-AHNP) en route from Santa Maria in the Azores to Bermuda disappears without trace with the loss of all 31 people on board. At last contact, the plane was estimated to be just under two hours away from Bermuda. Among those lost aboard the plane is retired Royal Air Force Air Marshal Arthur Coningham. Orville Wright, co-inventor of the world's first practical fixed-wing aircraft, dies in Dayton, Ohio at the age of 76.
February Aerocar International begins design and development of a flying automobile designed by Moulton Taylor. Closed from 1941 to 1945 because of the German invasion of the Soviet Union during World War II and reopened in 1945 only to cargo and mail flights, Leningrad′s Shosseynaya Airport (the future Pulkovo Airport) finally reopens to scheduled passenger service. February 16 – A U.S. Joint Intelligence Committee study forecasts that by 1957 the Soviet Union will have the atomic bomb and a long-range strategic air force and will be able to inflict substantial damage on the United States with the use of atomic, chemical, and biological weapons. February 18 – The Spanish airline Aviaco is formed as an air freight company operating six Bristol 170s. February 29 – The Milton Reynolds-Boston Museum China Expedition, sponsored by Milton Reynolds, Life, and the Boston Museum of Science, leaves Chicago, Illinois, in the modified ex-United States Navy RY-1 Liberator Express executive transport aircraft The Explorer with planned stops at Palm Springs, San Francisco, Honolulu, Wake Island, Okinawa, and Tokyo before arriving in Shanghai, China. Personally leading the expedition, Reynolds plans to use the plane — equipped with radar, a height-measuring radio instrument, cameras, thermometers, and barometers and flown by record-setting pilot William P. "Bill" Odom — to carry a team of American and Chinese geologists, meteorologists, physicists, and photographers to explore China's Amne Machin mountain range and determine if reports are true that Amne Machin itself is taller than Mount Everest, as well as to search for the source of the Yellow River.
March The Israeli Air Force is formed along with the new state of Israel. The U.S. Joint Intelligence Committee forecasts that the Soviet Union will test its first atomic bomb sometime between 1950 and 1953 and by 1953 will have from 20 to 50 atomic bombs, depending on when it tests its first one. March 2 – A Sabena Douglas DC-3 (registration OO-AWH), crashes on approach to London Heathrow Airport in low visibility conditions, killing all 19 people on board. March 10 – Fighter Squadron 5 (VF-5) becomes the first United States Navy aircraft carrier squadron to be equipped with jet aircraft. March 12 – Northwest Airlines Flight 4422, a chartered Douglas C-54G-1-DO, crashes into Mount Sanford in the Territory of Alaska, killing all 30 people on board. March 19 – The British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) extends its Hong Kong service to Japan. March 23 – Group Captain John Cunningham sets a new world altitude record of in a de Havilland Vampire. March 24 – A Boulton Paul P.108 Balliol becomes the first aircraft to fly with a single turboprop engine (an Armstrong Siddeley Mamba). March 28 – United States Air Force B-29 Superfortresses undergo aerial refueling tests, demonstrating the viability of this technique to extend the range of strategic bombers. March 31 – The modified ex-United States Navy RY-1 Liberator Express executive transport aircraft The Explorer, piloted by William P. "Bill" Odom and carrying the Milton Reynolds-Boston Museum China Expedition — which planned to explore China's Amne Machin mountain range and determine if reports are true that Amne Machin itself is taller than Mount Everest, as well as to search for the source of the Yellow River — suffers damage when it becomes mired in mud during a takeoff attempt at Peiping (now Beijing), China. The most recent of a series of delays, the accident prompts the expedition's leader, Milton Reynolds, to cancel the expedition.
April Two specially modified Gloster Meteors begin carrier trials aboard . Pacific Ocean Airlines discontinues operations. The International Federation of Air Line Pilots' Associations is formed during a conference in London. April 2 – The modified ex-United States Navy RY-1 Liberator Express executive transport aircraft The Explorer, piloted by William P. "Bill" Odom — which originally had arrived in China to carry a scientific team on the Milton Reynolds-Boston Museum China Expedition — which planned to explore China's Amne Machin mountain range and determine if reports are true that Amne Machin itself is taller than Mount Everest, as well as to search for the source of the Yellow River but had been cancelled by its leader Milton Reynolds on March 31 — departs Shanghai, China, then returns to Shanghai 12 or 13 hours later. Reynolds explains that he had intended to begin a return flight to the United States via India but had turned around when he realized he and his crew lacked Indian visas. Angry Chinese scientists of the Academia Sinica immediately accuse him of violating an agreement with them by making a flight to explore Amne Machin on his own and without their permission, leaving some of the expedition's original team stranded in Peiping (now Beijing) and Lanchow (now Lanzhou). The government of the Republic of China impounds the plane. April 3 – Alitalia launches its first postwar service from Italy (Rome-Ciampino) to the United Kingdom (Londons Northolt Aerodrome). April 4 – The troubled Milton Reynolds-Boston Museum China Expedition comes to an unsuccessful but dramatic end as its RY-1 Liberator Express The Explorer arrives at Haneda Airport in Tokyo after an unauthorized 12-hour flight from Shanghai. Expedition leader Milton Reynolds claims that he and the plane's three-man crew had tricked Chinese guards into letting them board the impounded plane by promising them ballpoint pens (an expensive commodity at the time), and that Reynolds had tossed about 50 pens out the door to the Chinese, then slammed the door as pilot Bill Odom taxied for takeoff. Fearing interception by Republic of China Air Force fighters, the men had flown the plane at an altitude of about for the first of the flight. The men had ignored orders from Haneda Airport to return to Shanghai, and Reynolds accuses Chinese officials of demanding bribes to allow The Explorer to take off after the failure of the expedition. April 5 – A Soviet Air Force Yakovlev Yak-3 fighter harassing aircraft flying into West Berlin during the Berlin Blockade collides with a British European Airways Vickers VC.1B Viking airliner as it is levelling off to land at RAF Gatow in West Berlin. Both aircraft crash, killing the fighter pilot and all 14 people aboard the airliner and leading to a diplomatic standoff between the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom and United States. April 6 – Seventeen hijackers commandeer a CSA Czech Airlines airliner carrying a total of 26 people during a domestic flight in Czechoslovakia from Prague to Bratislava. They force it to take them to Neubiberg Air Base in the American Occupation Zone in Allied-occupied Germany. No one is injured in the incident.Aviation Safety Network Hijacking Description April 15 – The Pan American World Airways Lockheed L-1049C-55-81 Super Constellation Clipper Empress of the Skies, operating as Flight 1–10, crashes short of the runway at Shannon Airport in Shannon, Ireland, killing 30 of the 31 people on board and leaving the lone survivor injured. April 17 – The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff inform the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission that the United States must establish a stockpile of atomic weapons if the United States Armed Forces are to sustain an immediate air offensive against the Soviet Union in the event of war. April 18 – The flag carrier of Cyprus, Cyprus Airways, begins flight operations, using three Douglas DC-3 airliners flown by British pilots from British European Airways (BEA) to offer service from Nicosia to Athens, Beirut, Cairo, Haifa, Istanbul, London, and Rome. April 21