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Wed 12 Apr, 2006 08:44 am
was there ever a commercial air passenger plane regular sched. refueled in the air?
Not that I'm aware of. There was some civilian experimentation with in-air refueling back in the days of the mail planes' heyday, before WWII, without really getting a practical solution worked out. In the late 'Teens, early '20s, a popular barnstorming stunt involved a "wing walker" wearing a 5 gallon can of gas strapped to his back, who would clamber from one plane to another in the air, and the first in-air refueling using a hose was as US Army Air Corp experiment which took place in 1923, if I recall correctly.
Stunts asisde, the development of in-air refueling was pretty much a military deal, and the practice of has remained such. It didn't really become practical enough to become commonplace until the 1950's, though the systems used then and now pretty much were worked out during and immediately after WWII, with the ready availability of planes large enough to carry enough fuel payload to make the excercize worthwhile. By that time, airliners were perfectly capable of crossing continents and oceans without refueling.
Again, as far as I know, no commercial civilian aircraft have in-air refueling capability; they lack the means by which to make a connection through which fuel could flow.