Flight Facts

Moths are unable to fly during an earthquake.

Honey bees fly at 15 miles per hour.

Vultures fly without flapping their wings.

An albatross can sleep while it flies!

At any given moment during peak travel hours, there are approximately 45,000 people airborne over the United States.

On Titan, Saturn's largest moon, the atmosphere is so thick and the gravity so low that humans could fly through it by flapping "wings" attached to their arms.

A flock of Canada geese knocked out both engines of US Airways Flight 1549 roughly two minutes after takeoff. Captain Chesley Sullenberger had about three and a half minutes to save 155 lives. He landed on the Hudson River - and when NTSB later ran simulations with a realistic 35-second decision delay added, the return to LaGuardia crashed short of the runway. The river was the only choice. Every single person survived.

Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager flew a plane built by volunteers in a Mojave Desert hangar. On takeoff, the fuel-heavy wings scraped the runway and the winglets broke off. They kept flying anyway. Nine days, three minutes and 44 seconds later, they landed after circling the entire globe nonstop. They had just 106 pounds of fuel left, only 1.5% of what they took off with. The plane now hangs in the Smithsonian.