Tel Aviv

Tel Aviv-Yafo (Hebrew: תל אביב-יפו‎ pronounced [ˈtel ˈaviv ˈjafo], Arabic: تل أبيب يافا‎) or Tel Aviv (Hebrew: תל אביב‎ pronounced [ˈtel ˈaviv], Arabic: تل أبيب‎) is a city in Israel, and the second most populous city administered by that country's government after Jerusalem. Situated on the Mediterranean coastline in central-west Israel, Tel Aviv has a population of 426,138. The greater Tel Aviv Metropolitan Area, also known as Gush Dan, constitutes Israel's largest conurbation with 3,713,200 residents, 42% of the country's population. Tel Aviv is governed by the Tel Aviv-Yafo municipality, headed by Ron Huldai, and is home to many foreign embassies.

Tel Aviv was founded in 1909 by Jewish immigrants on the outskirts of the ancient port city of Jaffa (Hebrew: יפו‎ Yafo). Immigration by mostly Jewish refugees meant that the growth of Tel Aviv soon outpaced Jaffa's, which had a majority Arab population at the time. Tel Aviv and Jaffa were merged into a single municipality in 1950, two years after the establishment of the State of Israel. Tel Aviv's White City, designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003, comprises the world's largest concentration of Bauhaus buildings.

El Al

El Al Israel Airlines Ltd (TASE: ELAL), trading as El Al (Hebrew: אל על‎, "To The Skies" or "Skywards", Arabic: إل عال‎), is the flag carrier of Israel. Since its inaugural flight from Geneva to Tel Aviv in September 1948, the airline has grown to serve some 45 destinations, operating scheduled domestic and international services and cargo flights to Europe, North America, Africa and the Near and Far East from its main base in Ben Gurion International Airport. The predecessor airline, Palestine Airways, had ceased to operate when its aircraft were impressed by the Royal Air Force for service in World War II.

El Al in principle offers only kosher in-flight meals and does not fly passengers on the Jewish Sabbath or religious holidays. It is the only commercial air-liner to equip its planes with missile defense systems, and is considered one of the world's most secure airlines, thanks to its stringent security procedures, both on the ground and on board its aircraft. Although it has been the target of many attempted hijackings and terror attacks, only one El Al flight has ever been hijacked. As Israel's national airline, El Al has played an important role in humanitarian rescue efforts, airlifting Jews from other countries to Israel, setting the world record for the most passengers on a commercial aircraft (single plane record of 1,122 passengers) by Operation Solomon when 14,500 Jewish refugees were transported from Ethiopia in 1991.

Heathrow Airport

Heathrow Airport (IATA: LHR, ICAO: EGLL) is a major international airport in west London, England. Heathrow is the busiest airport in the United Kingdom, busiest airport in Europe by passenger traffic, and sixth busiest airport in the world by total passenger traffic. In 2014, it handled a record 73.4 million passengers, a 1.4 percent increase from 2013.

Heathrow lies 12 nautical miles (22 km; 14 mi) west of Central London, and has two parallel east–west runways along with four operational terminals on a site that covers 12.14 square kilometres (4.69 sq mi). The airport is owned and operated by Heathrow Airport Holdings, which itself is owned by FGP TopCo Limited, an international consortium led by the Spanish Ferrovial Group that includes Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and Government of Singapore Investment Corporation. Heathrow is the primary hub for British Airways and the primary operating base for Virgin Atlantic.

In September 2012, the UK government established the Airports Commission, an independent commission chaired by Sir Howard Davies to examine various options for increasing capacity at UK airports. The commission shortlisted two options for expanding Heathrow in its interim report in 2013, along with a third option for expanding Gatwick Airport. The final report, published on 1 July 2015, backed a third runway at Heathrow.

Flight

Flight is the process by which an object moves, through an atmosphere (the air in the case of earth) or beyond it (as in the case of spaceflight) without direct support from any surface. This can be achieved by generating aerodynamic lift, propulsive thrust, aerostatically using buoyancy, or by ballistic movement.

Many things fly, from natural aviators such as birds, bats and insects to human inventions such as missiles, aircraft such as airplanes, helicopters and balloons, to rockets such as spacecraft.

The engineering aspects of flight are studied in aerospace engineering which is subdivided into aeronautics, the study of vehicles that travel through the air, and astronautics, the study of vehicles that travel through space, and in ballistics, the study of the flight of projectiles.

Types of flight

Buoyant flight

Humans have managed to construct lighter than air vehicles that raise off the ground and fly, due to their buoyancy in air.

An aerostat is a system that remains aloft primarily through the use of buoyancy to give an aircraft the same overall density as air. Aerostats include free balloons, airships, and moored balloons. An aerostat's main structural component is its envelope, a lightweight skin containing a lifting gas to provide buoyancy, to which other components are attached.

David Ben-Gurion

David Ben-Gurion (Hebrew: דָּוִד בֶּן-גּוּרִיּוֹן‎; pronounced [daˈvɪd ben gurˈjo:n], born David Grün; 16 October 1886, Płońsk, Poland – 1 December 1973, Tel Aviv, Israel) was the primary founder of the State of Israel and the first Prime Minister of Israel.

Ben-Gurion's passion for Zionism, which began early in life, led him to become a major Zionist leader and Executive Head of the World Zionist Organization in 1946. As head of the Jewish Agency from 1935, and later president of the Jewish Agency Executive, he was the de facto leader of the Jewish community in Palestine, and largely led its struggle for an independent Jewish state in Mandatory Palestine. On 14 May 1948, he formally proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel, and was the first to sign the Israeli Declaration of Independence, which he had helped to write. Ben-Gurion led Israel during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and united the various Jewish militias into the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). Subsequently, he became known as "Israel's founding father".