Air Travel

Commercial Services Develop

World War I stimulated rapid development of flying technology. The postwar period saw a golden age of flying, with air shows touring cities and towns across the United States and other countries and air races driving forward airframe design and engine performance. The first air mail flights in the United States, between New York and Washington, D.C., with a stopover in Philadelphia, took place in 1918. The requirements for such services contributed directly toward developing larger aircraft with longer ranges.

The flights of John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown in 1919, Charles Lindbergh in 1927, and the trans-Pacific crossing by Kingsford Smith in 1928 signaled the potential for commercial passenger and freight traffic. Early commercial flights between Florida and Cuba were offered in 1920 using flying boats. This was also the great age of dreamers, and many enterprises failed, but, after Lindbergh's flight, commercial aviation became a serious business with large-scale investment. It was a period of rapid growth: For example, in the United States, there were fewer than 10,000 commercial travelers in 1926, but by the end of the decade, there were approximately 170,000 per year. At this time most of the traffic was business, with leisure being confined to the wealthy.

Development in the United States was paralleled elsewhere. By August 1919, a daily service operated between Paris and London for as many as 14 passengers. This proved not to be financially viable because of high operating costs, high fares, and low passenger turnout. One of the early international collaborations was Franco-Roumaine in 1920, a joint project between Romania and France. Worldwide, individual nations rushed to establish their own flag carriers. In the Netherlands, KLM was formed on October 7, 1919. The Russian company Aeroflot was founded as Droboflovlot in 1928. Air France was formed in 1933 through the merger of several smaller companies with extensive routes across Europe, French colonies in northern Africa, and elsewhere. In Britain, European and intercontinental flights remained largely separate until 1974.

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