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This is a list of aviation-related events from 1903:
March
- March 31 - Richard Pearse is reputed to have made a powered flight in a heavier-than-air craft, a monoplane of his own construction, that crash lands on a hedge. This date is computed from circumstantial evidence of eyewitnesses as the flight was not well-documented at the time. The machine made a flight claimed to be around 150 feet (45.7 m) on his farm at Upper Waitohi, near Timaru in south Canterbury, New Zealand.
May
August
- August 18 - Karl Jatho makes a flight with his motored airplane in front of 4 people. [1] (http://www.flyingmachines.org/jatho.html). His craft flies up to 200 feet up to few yards/meters above the ground in a powered heavier-than-air craft.
November
December
Events
- Léon Levavasseur demonstrates his Antoinette engine, designed as a lightweight powerplant specifically for aircraft.
- Konstantin Tsiolkovski deduces the Basic Rocket Equation in his article Explorations of outer space with the help of reaction apparatuses.
The Wrights' claim to the first powered, piloted flight is somewhat contentious, as ambiguity arises from the definition of "flight". Pearse was somewhat secretive, and did not document or photograph his flights nearly as well as the Wrights did, however research has produced many corroborating eye-witness accounts of his exploits. The controversy is deepened because Pearse himself downplayed his achievements, not feeling that his "flights" were sufficiently well controlled to warrant the term. His advocates point out that some of these flights (especially that of July 10) were in fact better controlled than the Wrights' efforts of December 17. see Early flying machines
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