and
Brown, taking on mail prior to the first non-stop transatlantic flight in 1919 The idea of transatlantic flight came about with the advent of the
hot air balloon. The balloons of the period were inflated with
coal gas, a moderate lifting medium compared to
hydrogen or
helium, but with enough lift to use the winds that would later be known as the
Jet Stream. In 1859,
John Wise built an enormous aerostat named the
Atlantic, intending to cross the
Atlantic. The flight lasted less than a day, crash-landing in
Henderson, New York.
Thaddeus S. C. Lowe prepared a massive balloon of called the
City of New York to take off from
Philadelphia in 1860, but was interrupted by the onset of the
American Civil War in 1861. Powered by two
Rolls-Royce Eagle 360 hp engines, the
Vickers Vimy flown by British aviators
Alcock and Brown made the first non-stop transatlantic flight in 1919. The first transatlantic flight by rigid airship, and the first return transatlantic flight, was made on 2 July 1919. The first successful transatlantic flight in a balloon was the
Double Eagle II from
Presque Isle, Maine, to
Miserey, near
Paris in 1978.
First transatlantic flights in an east-to-west Atlantic attempt. Hamel disappeared in May 1914 and the large monoplane partially built was never completed. In April 1913, the London newspaper
The Daily Mail offered a prize of £10,000 (£ in ) to The
competition was suspended with the outbreak of
World War I in 1914 but reopened after
Armistice was declared in 1918. Four teams were competing for the first non-stop flight across the Atlantic. They were Australian pilot
Harry Hawker with observer Kenneth Mackenzie-Grieve in a single-engine
Sopwith Atlantic;
Frederick Raynham and C. W. F. Morgan in a
Martinsyde; the
Handley Page Group, led by Admiral
Mark Kerr; and the
Vickers entry John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown. Each group had to ship its aircraft to Newfoundland and make a rough field for the takeoff. Hawker and Mackenzie-Grieve made the first attempt on 18 May, but engine failure brought them down into the ocean where they were rescued. Raynham and Morgan also attempted on 18 May but crashed on takeoff due to the high fuel load. The Handley Page team was in the final stages of testing its aircraft for the flight in June, but the Vickers group was ready earlier. During 14–15 June 1919, the British aviators
Alcock and Brown made the first non-stop transatlantic flight. During the War, Alcock resolved to fly the Atlantic, and after the war, he approached the
Vickers engineering and aviation firm at
Weybridge, which had considered entering its
Vickers Vimy IV twin-engined bomber in the competition but had not yet found a pilot. Alcock's enthusiasm impressed Vickers's team, and he was appointed as its pilot. Work began on converting the Vimy for the long flight, replacing its bomb racks with extra petrol tanks. Shortly afterwards Brown, who was unemployed, approached Vickers seeking a post and his knowledge of long-distance navigation convinced them to take him on as Alcock's navigator. Vickers's team quickly assembled its plane and at around 1:45 p.m. on 14 June, while the Handley Page team was conducting yet another test, the Vickers plane took off from Lester's Field, in
St John's, Newfoundland. Alcock and Brown flew the modified Vickers Vimy, powered by two
Rolls-Royce Eagle 360 hp engines. It was not an easy flight, with unexpected fog, and a snow storm almost causing the crewmen to crash into the sea. Their altitude varied between sea level and and upon takeoff, they carried 865
imperial gallons (3,900 L) of fuel. They made landfall in
Clifden,
County Galway at 8:40 a.m. on 15 June 1919, not far from their intended landing place, after less than sixteen hours of flying. The
Secretary of State for Air,
Winston Churchill, presented Alcock and Brown with the
Daily Mail prize for the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in "less than 72 consecutive hours". There was a small amount of mail (3lb) carried on the flight making it also the first transatlantic
airmail flight. The two aviators were
knighted one week later by
King George V at
Windsor Castle. The first transatlantic flight by
rigid airship, and the first return transatlantic flight, was made just a couple of weeks after the
transatlantic flight of Alcock and Brown, on 2 July 1919. Major
George Herbert Scott of the
Royal Air Force flew the
airship R34 with his crew and passengers from
RAF East Fortune, Scotland to
Mineola, New York (on
Long Island), covering a distance of about in about four and a half days. The flight was intended as a testing ground for postwar commercial services by airship (see
Imperial Airship Scheme), and it was the first flight to transport paying passengers. The R34 wasn't built as a passenger carrier, so extra accommodations were arranged by slinging hammocks in the keel walkway. The return journey to
Pulham in
Norfolk, was from 10 to 13 July over some 75 hours. The first aerial crossing of the South Atlantic was made by the Portuguese naval aviators
Gago Coutinho and
Sacadura Cabral in 1922. Coutinho and Cabral flew from
Lisbon, Portugal, to
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in stages, using three different
Fairey III biplanes, and they covered a distance of between 30 March and 17 June. The first transatlantic flight between Spain and South America was completed in January 1926 with a crew of Spanish aviators on board
Plus Ultra, a
Dornier Do J flying boat; the crew was the captain
Ramón Franco, co-pilot
Julio Ruiz de Alda Miqueleiz, Teniente de Navio (Navy Lieutenant), Juan Manuel Durán, and Pablo Rada. The first transpolar flight eastbound and the first flight crossing the North Pole ever was the airship carrying Norwegian explorer and pilot
Roald Amundsen on 11 May 1926. He flew with the airship "NORGE" ("Norway") piloted by the Italian colonel
Umberto Nobile, non-stop from
Svalbard, Norway to
Teller, Alaska, USA. The flight lasted for 72 hours. The first night-time crossing of the South Atlantic was accomplished on 16–17 April 1927 by the Portuguese aviators
Sarmento de Beires, Jorge de Castilho and Manuel Gouveia, flying from the
Bijagós Archipelago,
Portuguese Guinea, to
Fernando de Noronha, Brazil in the
Argos, a
Dornier Wal flying boat. with the
Spirit of St. Louis – 1927. In the early morning of 20 May 1927,
Charles Lindbergh took off from
Roosevelt Field,
Mineola, New York, on his successful attempt to fly nonstop from New York to the European continental land mass. Over the next 33.5 hours, Lindbergh and the
Spirit of St. Louis encountered many challenges before landing at
Le Bourget Airport near
Paris, at 10:22 p.m. on 21 May 1927, completing the first solo crossing of the Atlantic. The first east-west non-stop transatlantic crossing by an aeroplane was made in 1928 by the
Bremen, a German
Junkers W33 type aircraft, from
Baldonnel Airfield in
County Dublin, Ireland. On 18 August 1932
Jim Mollison made the first east-to-west solo trans-Atlantic flight; flying from
Portmarnock in Ireland to
Pennfield, New Brunswick, Canada in a
de Havilland Puss Moth. In 1936 the first woman aviator to cross the Atlantic east to west, and the first person to fly solo from England to North America, was
Beryl Markham. She wrote about her adventures in her memoir,
West with the Night. The first transpolar transatlantic (and transcontinental) crossing was the piloted by the crew led by
Valery Chkalov covering some over 63 hours from
Moscow,
Russia to
Vancouver, Washington from 18–20 June 1937.
Commercial airship flights Following earlier irregular flights carrying commercial mail such as the flight of the
USS Los Angeles (ZR-3) from Germany to the USA in October 1924, on 11 October 1928
Hugo Eckener commanding the
airship Graf Zeppelin as part of
DELAG's operations began the first non-stop transatlantic passenger flights, leaving
Friedrichshafen, Germany, at 07:54 on 11 October 1928, and arriving at
NAS Lakehurst,
New Jersey, on 15 October. Thereafter, DELAG used the
Graf Zeppelin on regularly scheduled passenger flights across the North Atlantic, from
Frankfurt-am-Main to Lakehurst. In the summer of 1931, a South Atlantic route was introduced, from Frankfurt and Friedrichshafen to
Recife and
Rio de Janeiro. Between 1931 and 1937 the
Graf Zeppelin crossed the South Atlantic 136 times. The British rigid airship
R100 made a successful return trip from
Cardington to
Montreal in July–August 1930, in what was intended to be a proving flight for regularly scheduled passenger services. Following the
R101 disaster in October 1930, the British rigid airship program was abandoned and the R100 scrapped, leaving DELAG as the sole remaining operator of transatlantic passenger airship flights. In 1936 DELAG began passenger flights with
LZ 129 Hindenburg, and made 36 Atlantic crossings (North and South). The first passenger trip across the North Atlantic left Friedrichshafen on 6 May with 56 crew and 50 passengers, arriving at Lakehurst on 9 May. The fare was $400 one way; the ten westward trips that season took 53 to 78 hours and eastward took 43 to 61 hours. The last eastward trip of the year left Lakehurst on 10 October; the first North Atlantic trip of 1937 ended in the
Hindenburg disaster.
Commercial aeroplane service attempts It would take two more decades after Alcock and Brown's first nonstop flight across the Atlantic in 1919 before commercial airplane flights became practical. The North Atlantic presented severe challenges for aviators due to weather and the long distances involved, with few stopping points. Initial transatlantic services, therefore, focused on the South Atlantic, where some French, German, and Italian airlines offered
seaplane service for mail between South America and West Africa in the 1930s. Between February 1934 and August 1939
Lufthansa operated a regular airmail service between
Natal, Brazil, and
Bathurst, Gambia, continuing
via the
Canary Islands and Spain to
Stuttgart, Germany. From December 1935,
Air France opened a regular weekly airmail route between South America and Africa. German airlines experimented with mail routes over the North Atlantic in the early 1930s, with flying boats and dirigibles. In August 1938 a
Deutsche Luft Hansa Focke-Wulf Fw 200 Condor long-range airliner flew non-stop from Berlin
to New York and returned non-stop as a proving flight for the development of passenger-carrying services. This was the first landplane to fulfil this function and marked a departure from the British and American reliance on flying boats for long over-water routes. Operators of the Fw 200 focussed on other routes, though.
Flying boats ,
Ireland was the European terminus for all transatlantic flying boat flights in the 1930s. In the 1930s a
flying boat route was the only practical means of transatlantic air travel, as land-based aircraft lacked sufficient range for the crossing. An agreement between the governments of the US, Britain, Canada, and the
Irish Free State in 1935 set aside the Irish town of
Foynes, the most westerly port in
Ireland, as the terminal for all such services to be established.
Imperial Airways had bought the
Short Empire flying boat, primarily for use along the
empire routes to Africa, Asia and Australia, and had established an international airport on
Darrell's Island, in the
Imperial fortress colony of
Bermuda (640 miles off
Cape Hatteras,
North Carolina), which began serving both Imperial Airways, subsequently renamed
British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) and
Pan American World Airways (PAA) flights from the United States in 1936, but began exploring the possibility of using it for transatlantic flights from 1937. PAA would begin scheduled trans-Atlantic flights via Bermuda before Imperial Airways did, enabling the United States Government to covertly assist the British Government before the United States entry into the Second World War as mail was taken off trans-Atlantic PAA flights by the Imperial Censorship of
British Security Co-ordination to search for secret communications from Axis spies operating in the United States, including the
Joe K ring, with information gained being shared with the
Federal Bureau of Investigation. The range of the Short Empire flying boat was less than that of the equivalent US
Sikorsky "Clipper" flying boats and as such was initially unable to provide a true trans-Atlantic service. In the 1930s, under the direction of
Juan Trippe,
Pan American began to get interested in the feasibility of a transatlantic passenger service using flying boats. . On 5 July 1937, A.S. Wilcockson flew a
Short Empire for
Imperial Airways from Foynes to
Botwood,
Newfoundland and Harold Gray piloted a
Sikorsky S-42 for Pan American in the opposite direction. Both flights were a success and both airlines made a series of subsequent proving flights that same year to test out a variety of different weather conditions.
Air France also became interested and began experimental flights in 1938. As the Short Empire only had enough range with enlarged fuel tanks at the expense of a passenger room, several pioneering experiments were done with the aircraft to work around the problem. It was known that aircraft could maintain flight with a greater load than is possible to take off with, so Major Robert H. Mayo, Technical general manager at
Imperial Airways, proposed mounting a small, long-range seaplane on top of a larger carrier aircraft, using the combined power of both to bring the smaller aircraft to operational height, at which time the two aircraft would separate, the carrier aircraft returning to base while the other flew on to its destination. comprised the
Short S.21 Maia, (
G-ADHK) which was a variant of the
Short "C-Class" Empire flying-boat fitted with a trestle or pylon on the top of the fuselage to support the
Short S.20 Mercury(
G-ADHJ). The first successful in-flight separation of the
Composite was carried out on 6 February 1938, and the first transatlantic flight was made on 21 July 1938 from
Foynes to
Boucherville.
Mercury, piloted by Captain
Don Bennett, separated from her carrier at 8 pm to continue what was to become the first commercial non-stop east-to-west transatlantic flight by a
heavier-than-air machine. This initial journey took 20 hrs, 21 min at an average ground speed of . Another technology developed for transatlantic commercial flight was
aerial refuelling. Sir
Alan Cobham developed the
Grappled-line looped-hose system to stimulate the possibility for long-range transoceanic commercial aircraft flights, and publicly demonstrated it for the first time in 1935. In the system, the receiver aircraft trailed a steel cable which was then grappled by a line shot from the tanker. The line was then drawn back into the tanker where the receiver's cable was connected to the refueling hose. The receiver could then haul back in its cable bringing the hose to it. Once the hose was connected, the tanker climbed sufficiently above the receiver aircraft to allow the fuel to flow under gravity. Cobham founded
Flight Refuelling Ltd in 1934 and by 1938 had demonstrated the ''FRL's looped-hose
system to refuel the Short Empire flying boat Cambria'' from an
Armstrong Whitworth AW.23.
Handley Page Harrows were used in the 1939 trials to aerial refuel the Empire flying boats for regular transatlantic crossings. From 5 August – 1 October 1939, sixteen crossings of the Atlantic were made by Empire flying boats, with 15 crossings using FRL's aerial refuelling system. After the 16 crossings more trials were suspended due to the outbreak of World War II. The
Short S.26 was built in 1939 as an enlarged
Short Empire, powered by four 1,400 hp (1,044 kW)
Bristol Hercules sleeve valve radial engines and designed with the capability of crossing the Atlantic without refuelling. It was intended to form the backbone of
Imperial Airways' Empire services. It could fly unburdened, or 150 passengers for a "short hop". On 21 July 1939, the first aircraft, (G-AFCI "Golden Hind"), was first flown at Rochester by Shorts' chief
test pilot,
John Lankester Parker. Although two aircraft were handed over to Imperial Airways for crew training, all three were impressed (along with their crews) into the
RAF before they could begin civilian operation with the onset of
World War II. '' in 1939. Meanwhile, Pan Am bought nine
Boeing 314 Clippers in 1939, a long-range flying boat capable of flying the
Atlantic. The "Clippers" were built for "one-class" luxury air travel, a necessity given the long duration of transoceanic flights. The seats could be converted into 36 bunks for overnight accommodation; with a cruising speed of only . The 314s had a lounge and dining area, and the galleys were crewed by chefs from four-star hotels. Men and women were provided with separate dressing rooms, and white-coated stewards served five and six-course meals with gleaming silver service. The
Yankee Clipper's inaugural trip across the Atlantic was on 24 June 1939 between New York and Marseille. The second route started the following month from
Southampton to
Port Washington, New York with intermediate stops at
Foynes, Ireland,
Botwood, Newfoundland, and
Shediac, New Brunswick. Its first passenger flight was on 9 July, and this continued only until the onset of the
Second World War, less than two months later. The
Clipper fleet was then pressed into military service and the flying boats were used for ferrying personnel and equipment to the
European and
Pacific fronts.
Maturation during World War II. This base was used throughout the war for trans-Atlantic ferrying of aircraft. It was from the emergency exigencies of World War II that crossing the Atlantic by land-based aircraft became a practical and commonplace possibility. With the
Fall of France in June 1940, and the loss of much war
materiel on the continent, the need for the British to purchase replacement materiel from the United States was urgent. Airbases for refuelling were built in
Greenland and
Iceland, which were occupied by the United States after the
German invasion of Denmark (1940). The British and United States Governments hurried a secret agreement before Britain declared war on Germany in 1939 for the United States to establish a base in Bermuda. Ultimately, the agreement would be expanded to include a
United States Naval Operating Base, containing a Naval Air Station serving anti-submarine flying boats, on the
Great Sound (near to the
Royal Naval Dockyard, Bermuda,
Royal Naval Air Station Bermuda that had been operated for the
Royal Navy with the rest of the
Fleet Air Arm at its original location in
HM Dockyard Bermuda until 1939 by the Royal Air Force, and the Darrell's Island airport, which the Royal Air Force took over for trans-Atlantic ferrying of flying boats such as the
Catalinas, which were flown there from United States factories to be tested before acceptance by the Air Ministry and delivery across the Atlantic, usually on direct flights to
Greenock,
Scotland.
RAF Transport Command flights, such as those flown by
Coronados, also utilised the facility as BOAC and PAA continued to do) and
Kindley Field, serving land planes, constructed by the United States Army for operation by the United States Army Air Forces, but to be used jointly by the Royal Air Force and Royal Navy. In January 1942, Prime Minister
Winston Churchill visited Bermuda on his return to Britain, following December 1941 meetings in
Washington D.C., with US President
Franklin Roosevelt, in the weeks after the
Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor. Churchill flew into Darrell's Island on the BOAC
Boeing 314 Berwick. Although it had been planned to continue the journey aboard the battleship
HMS Duke of York, he made an impulsive decision to complete it by a direct flight from Bermuda to Plymouth, England aboard Berwick, marking the first trans-Atlantic air crossing by a national leader. When the first runway at Kindley Field became operational in 1943, the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm relocated
Roc target tugs that had been operating on floats from RNAS Bermuda to the airfield to operate as land planes, and RAF Transport Command moved its operations there, leaving RAF Ferry Command at Darrell's Island. The time it was taken for an aircraft – such as the
Lockheed Hudson – bought in the United States, to be flown to
Nova Scotia and
Newfoundland, and then partially dis-assembled before being transported by ship to England, where it was re-assembled and subject to repairs of any damage sustained during shipment, could mean an aircraft could not enter service for several weeks. Further, German
U-boats operating in the
North Atlantic Ocean made it particularly hazardous for merchant ships between Newfoundland and Britain. Larger aircraft could be flown directly to the UK and an organization was set up to manage this using civilian pilots. The program was begun by the
Ministry of Aircraft Production. Its minister,
Lord Beaverbrook a Canadian by origin, reached an agreement with Sir
Edward Beatty, a friend and chairman of the
Canadian Pacific Railway Company to provide ground facilities and support.
Ministry of Aircraft Production would provide civilian crews and management and former RAF officer
Don Bennett, a specialist in long-distance flying and later Air Vice Marshal and commander of the
Pathfinder Force, led the first delivery flight in November 1940. In 1941, MAP took the operation off CPR to put the whole operation under the
Atlantic Ferry Organization ("Atfero"), which was set up by Morris W. Wilson, a banker in
Montreal. Wilson hired civilian pilots to fly the aircraft to the UK. The pilots were then ferried back in converted RAF
Liberators. "Atfero hired the pilots, planned the routes, selected the airports [and] set up weather and radiocommunication stations." , June 1942. The organization was passed to the Air Ministry administration by retaining civilian pilots, some of whom were Americans, alongside RAF navigators and British radio operators. After completing delivery, crews were flown back to Canada for the next run.
RAF Ferry Command was formed on 20 July 1941, by the raising of the RAF Atlantic Ferry Service to Command status. Its commander for its whole existence was
Air Chief Marshal Sir
Frederick Bowhill. Ferry Command did this over only one area of the world, rather than the more general routes that Transport Command later developed. The Command's operational area was the North Atlantic, and its responsibility was to bring the larger aircraft that had the range to do the trip over the ocean from American and Canadian factories to the RAF home Commands. After World War II long runways were available, and North American and European carriers such as
Pan Am,
TWA,
Trans Canada Airlines (TCA), BOAC, and
Air France acquired larger piston airliners that could cross the North Atlantic with stops (usually in
Gander,
Newfoundland and/or
Shannon, Ireland). In January 1946 Pan Am's
Douglas DC-4 was scheduled from New York (
La Guardia) to London (
Hurn) in 17 hours 40 minutes, five days a week; in June 1946
Lockheed L-049 Constellations had brought the eastward time to
London Heathrow down to 15 hr 15 min. To aid aircraft crossing the Atlantic, six nations grouped to divide the Atlantic into ten zones. Each zone had a letter and a vessel station in that zone, providing radio relays, radio navigation beacons, weather reports, and rescues if an aircraft went down. The six nations of the group split the cost of these vessels. The September 1947 ABC Guide shows 27 passenger flights a week west across the North Atlantic to the US and Canada on BOAC and other European airlines and 151 flights every two weeks on Pan Am, AOA, TWA, and TCA, 15 flights a week to the Caribbean and South America, plus three a month on Iberia and a
Latécoère 631 six-engine flying boat every two weeks to Fort de France.
Comet 1 at
London Heathrow in 1953 In May 1952, BOAC was the first airline to introduce a
passenger jet, the
de Havilland Comet, into airline service, operating on routes in Europe and beyond (but not transatlantic). All Comet 1 aircraft were grounded in April 1954 after four Comets crashed, the last two being BOAC aircraft which suffered catastrophic failure at altitude. Later jet airliners, including the larger and longer-range Comet 4, were designed so that in the event of for example a skin failure due to cracking the damage would be localized and not catastrophic. On 4 October 1958, BOAC started the "first-ever transatlantic jet service" between
London Heathrow and
New York Idlewild with a Comet 4, and
Pan Am followed on 26 October with a
Boeing 707 service between New York and Paris. Supersonic flights on
Concorde were offered from 1976 to 2003, from London (by British Airways) and Paris (by Air France) to New York and Washington, and back, with one-way flight times of around 3 hours 30 minutes. Since the loosening of regulations in the 1970s and 1980s, many airlines now compete across the Atlantic.
Present day In 2015, 44 million seats were offered on the transatlantic routes, an increase of 6% over the previous year. Of the 67 European airports with links to North America, the busiest was London
Heathrow Airport with 231,532 weekly seats, followed by Paris
Charles de Gaulle Airport with 129,831,
Frankfurt Airport with 115,420, and
Amsterdam Airport Schiphol with 79,611. Of the 45 airports in North America, the busiest linked to Europe was New York
John F. Kennedy International Airport with 198,442 seats, followed by
Toronto Pearson International Airport with 90,982, New York
Newark Liberty International Airport with 79,107, and Chicago
O'Hare International Airport with 75,391 seats.
Joint ventures, allowing coordination on prices, schedules, and strategy, control almost 75% of Transatlantic capacity. They are parallel to
airline alliances:
British Airways,
Iberia and
American Airlines are part of
Oneworld;
Lufthansa,
Air Canada and
United Airlines are members of
Star Alliance; and
Delta Air Lines,
Air France,
KLM and
Alitalia belong to
SkyTeam.
Low cost carriers are starting to compete on this market, most importantly
Norwegian Air Shuttle,
WestJet and
WOW Air. A total of 431 non-stop routes between North America and Europe were scheduled for summer 2017, up 84 routes from 347 in 2012 – a 24% increase. In 2016 Dr. Paul Williams of the University of Reading published a scientific study showing that transatlantic flight times are expected to change as the North Atlantic
jet stream responds to
global warming, with eastbound flights speeding up and westbound flights slowing down. In February 2017, Norwegian Air International announced it would start transatlantic flights to the
United States from the
United Kingdom and Ireland in the summer of 2017 on behalf of its parent company using the parent's new
Boeing 737 MAX aircraft expected to be delivered from May 2017. Norwegian Air performed its first transatlantic flight with a
Boeing 737-800 on 16 June 2017 between
Edinburgh Airport and
Stewart Airport, New York. The first transatlantic flight with a 737 MAX was performed on 15 July 2017, with a MAX 8 named
Sir Freddie Laker, between
Edinburgh Airport in Scotland and
Hartford International Airport in the US state of Connecticut, followed by a second rotation from Edinburgh to
Stewart Airport, New York. Long-haul
low-cost carriers are emerging on the transatlantic market with 545,000 seats offered over 60 city pairs in September 2017 (a 66% growth over one year), compared to 652,000 seats over 96 pairs for
leisure airlines and 8,798,000 seats over 357 pairs for
mainline carriers. LCC seats grew to 7.7% of North Atlantic seats in 2018 from 3.0% in 2016, led by Norwegian with 4.8% then WOW air with 1.6% and
WestJet with 0.6%, while the three
airline alliances dedicated
joint ventures seat share is 72.3%, down from 79.8% in 2015. By July 2018, Norwegian became the largest European airline for
New York, carrying 1.67 million passengers over a year, beating
British Airways's 1.63 million, while the U.S.
major carriers combined transported 26.1 million transatlantic passengers. ==Transatlantic routes==