1905 in aviation

Events

• In Santa Clara, California, Daniel J. Maloney flies for 20 minutes with a glider after starting from a balloon at a height of.
• The engineer Maurice Stanislas Léger's helicopter lifts a person vertically into the air in Monaco.
• U.S. Army Signal Corps transferred all balloon school activities to Fort Omaha, Nebraska.

January–December

• 18 January - The Wright brothers begin discussions with the United States Government about selling it an airplane.
• 16–20 March - Daniel Maloney is launched by balloon in a tandem-wing glider designed by John Montgomery and makes three successful flights at Aptos, California, the highest launch being at with an 18-minute descent to a predetermined landing location.
• 27 April - Sapper Moreton of the British Army's balloon section is lifted by a kite at Aldershot under the supervision of the kite's designer, Samuel Cody.
• 29 April - Daniel Maloney is launched by balloon in a tandem-wing glider designed by John Montgomery to an altitude of before release and gliding and then landing at a predetermined location as part of a large public demonstration of aerial flight at Santa Clara, California].
• 6 June - Gabriel Voisin lifts off of and flies along the River Seine in his float-glider towed by a motorboat.
• 23 June - The Wright brothers fly the Wright Flyer III for the first time. It is the first fully controllable and practical version of the original 1903 Wright Flyer.
• 14 July - Orville Wright has a serious crash with Wright Flyer III, upon which the Wright Brothers radically alter the aircraft. The front rudder is mainly the culprit for the Flyer's insistent pitching.
• 18 July - Daniel Maloney launches a tandem-wing glider designed by John Montgomery at Santa Clara, California. A balloon cable damages the glider and upon release Maloney and the aircraft fall uncontrolled to the ground, killing Maloney. This is the third death of a heavier-than-air aircraft pilot after Otto Lilienthal in 1896 and Percy Pilcher in 1899.
• 5 August - Nineteen-year-old Welshman Ernest Willows makes the first flight of Willows No. 1 a semi-rigid airship he had built.
• 31 August -Balloonist John Baldwin accidentally killed during a premature dynamite/balloon stunt at County Fair, Greenville Ohio
• September - The Wright Brothers resume flight experiments with the re-designed Flyer III with performance of the airplane immediately in the positive. Smooth controlled flights lasting over 20 minutes now occur.
• 7 September - Flying circles over a cornfield near Dayton, Ohio, and chasing flocks of birds, Orville Wright records history's first bird strike. The dead bird lays on the airplane's wing before Wright makes a sharp turn and dumps it off.
• 4 October - Piloting the Flyer III over Huffman Prairie outside Dayton, Ohio, Orville Wright makes the first airplane flight in history of over 30 minutes in length.
• 5 October - Wilbur Wright makes a flight of over Huffman Prairie in the Flyer III. The flight lasts for 39 minutes 23 seconds.
• 14 October - The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale is founded in Paris.
• 15 October - The Wright brothers record a flight of just over in 28 minutes in the Wright Flyer III.
• 16 October - The Wright brothers complete their 1905 test flight program, making their last flight until May 1908.
• 30 November - At Lake Constance, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin's LZ2 airship is damaged significantly while attempting its first launch.
• December - Neil MacDermid is carried aloft in Canada by a large box kite named The Siamese Twins, designed by Alexander Graham Bell.