Aviation technology emerged during
World War I.
Aviation between the World Wars saw the development of the first commercial flights. The major players in the early aviation industry were
Britain,
France, the
United States, and the
Soviet Union.
Post-war aviation saw the rapid expansion of commercial operations around the world.
Europe Britain Five airlines were established in the United Kingdom between 1916 and 1922. The first of these was
Aircraft Transport and Travel (AT&T), which operated the world's first regular scheduled
international flight for passengers in 1919. The first commercial
jet airliner to fly was the British
de Havilland DH.106 Comet. By 1952, the British state airline
British Overseas Airways Corporation had introduced the Comet into scheduled service. While a technical achievement, the plane suffered a series of highly public failures, including the crashing of
BOAC Flight 781 and
South African Airways Flight 201. The Comet 4 was introduced in 1958. The first successful service, from October 1958, was London–New York City, which became the typical
jet set route.
France Société Générale des Transports Aériens (SGTA) was the first commercial airline company in France, founded as Lignes Aériennes Farman in 1919. Commercial aviation developed in the France in the 1920s, subsidised by the government.
North America United States Harry Bruno and
Juan Trippe were early promoters of commercial aviation. The
Air Commerce Act of 1926 began to regularize commercial aviation by establishing standards, facilitation, and promotion. An Aeronautical Branch was established in the
Department of Commerce with
William P. MacCracken Jr. as director. To promote commercial aviation, he told
town fathers that "Communities without airports would be communities without airmail." Writing for ''
Collier's'' in 1929, he noted "Commercial aviation is the first industry inspired by hero-worship and built upon heros". He cited the promotion in South America by
Herbert Dargue in early 1927. After his 1927 trans-Atlantic flight,
Charles Lindbergh made a tour of the
contiguous United States, paid for by the
Daniel Guggenheim Foundation for the Promotion of Aeronautics. From that point, commercial aviation took off: Roads were choked on Sundays, for weeks afterward, by motorists trying to get to
Lambert Field, Lindbergh's home port in Saint Louis, to buy their first air hop. Hundreds of thousands of you went aloft for the first time that summer. The Aeronautical Branch was charged with issuing
commercial pilot licenses,
airworthiness certificates, and with investigating
air accidents. Many small regional airlines operated in the 1920s in the United States. Many of them merged or were acquired late in the decade by the first developing nationwide airlines, such as
Eastern Airlines,
Pan Am,
American Airlines, and
TWA. After
World War II, commercial aviation grew rapidly, using mostly ex-military aircraft to transport people and cargo. The experience used in designing
heavy bombers such as the
Boeing B-29 Superfortress and
Avro Lancaster could be used for designing heavy commercial aircraft. The
Douglas DC-3 also made for easier and longer commercial flights. With the
Boeing 707,
Pan Am made its first scheduled flight between New York City and Paris on 26 October 1958.
Latin America In the 1910s,
Brazil and
Argentina were among the first Latin American countries to possess the instruments of aircraft that were not all locally made, yet the aircraft was locally congregated. At that time, many individuals were interested to be pilots in Latin American countries, yet there were not sufficient resources and funding to support and promote the best interests of the aviation industry. In 1944, the
Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation attended by all Latin American countries except Argentina drafted the clauses of aviation law. The introduction of the
jet fighter F-80 by the US in 1945 pushed the Latin American countries even further away from development of aviation industry because it was simply expensive to recreate the sophisticated technology of F-80. In 1976, about seven percent of the world logged in the Latin American and Caribbean region. This contributed to the increase of average annual rate of air traffic. Subsequently, higher passenger load factor decided the profitability of these airlines. According to C. Bogolasky, airline pooling agreements between Latin American airlines contributed to better financial performance of the airlines. The economic problems related to the "airline capacity regulation, regulation of non-scheduled operations, tariff enforcement, high operating costs, passenger and cargo rates." ==Business aviation==