Suggestion on a new camera?

[F3Hadlow]

If you can, I would suggest you stick to the DSLRs from Nikon and Canon.
The Olympus looks quite good but they haven't got much background in the world of action photography. Although I'm hardly an expert in these matters.

[Rifleman]

I wouldn't say this without a bit of experience behind me,

[Omag 2.0]

If I'm well-informed, Olympus is the only one with the ultrasonic vibrating sensor. This prevents dust from setting on the sensor when changing lenses... I do think that's a very important thing...

[Boss_BlueAngels]

I'm a Canon man myself...

I VERY highly you don't get anything but a DSLR camera.  Even if you know nothing about how to use SLR now... reading the "how to's" sounds much more complicated that actually DOING it. lol  I know there are a lot of really great "point and shoots" that allow very similar options, but if you have the money, go for a DSLR body.

With that said... I decided to get a "inexpensive" body (Canon Rebel XT) in hopes of something easy to learn/fine tune my skills in order to spend the big bucks on the lenses.  The next lens I will get costs TWICE as much as this body.  In the next couple of years I will either sell the body, or just buy whatever body is "the best" for that time.

For aviation photography I really wouldn't go with anything less than 300mm.  Anything less will really leave a lot of open space on the pictures.  I just got a cheap consumer grade 100-300mm telephoto off of E-bay just to keep me happy untill I can buy the Sigma 50-500mm APO EX DG lens for $1,200.  

My most important piece of advice is to be patient as nothing in photography is really cheap. lol  It took me a full month of daily research to finally get the camera I got.  It is a large investment and is important that you find something that won't only fit your needs now, but in the future.  Find something with a lot of extra lenses that is fairly common so you won't have any compatability/repair issues in the future.  

Even if you can only afford a 18-55mm there is still A TON of things you can do with that such as practicing different exposure settings, composition, and just learning all the different functions/principles of photography.

[Dr.Goodfly]

Nice reccommendation theis, but I'd have to go with either a Nikon D70 with an 18-70 mm lens, or a Nikon D200.