Home > Airline
An airline is an organization providing aviation services to passengers and/or cargo. It owns or leases airliners with which to supply these services and may form partnerships or alliances with other airlines for reasons of mutual benefit. Airline services may be intercontinental, intracontinental, regional or domestic and may be operated as scheduled services or charters. Investment is greatFollowing World War I, the United States found itself swamped with aviators. Many decided to take their war-surplus aircraft on barnstorming campaigns, performing acrobatic maneuvers to woo crowds. In 1918, the United States Postal Service won the financial backing of Congress to begin experimenting with air mail service, initially using Curtiss Jenny aircraft that had been procured by the United States Army for reconaissance missions on the Western Front. The Army was the first to fly these missions, but quickly lost the contract when they proved to be too unreliable. By the mid-1920s, the Postal Service had developed its own air mail network, based on a transcontinental backbone between New York, New York and San Francisco, California. To supplant this service, they offered twelve contracts for spur routes to independent bidders: the carriers that won these routes would, through time and mergers, evolve into Braniff Airlines, American Airlines, United Airlines (originally a division of BoeingThe Boeing Company ( NYSE:BA) is a leading American aircraft and aerospace manufacturer, headquartered in Chicago, Illinois, with its largest production facilities near Seattle, Washington. It is also a defense contractor. It is listed on the New York Sto), Trans World AirlinesTrans World Airlines commonly known as TWA was an American airline which merged with American Airlines in April 2001. For many years it was headquarterd at the Kansas City Downtown Airport. At the time of its demise, it was headquartered in St. Louis, Mis, Northwest AirlinesNorthwest Airlines is an airline headquartered in Eagan, Minnesota. With three major hubs in the United States: Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport (where it accounts for more than 70% of passenger traffic), Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airp, and Eastern AirlinesFor the Chinese airline, see China Eastern Airlines. Eastern Airlines was a United States airline company that existed from the late 1920s to 1991. History Eastern Air Lines began life on April 19, 1926 as Pitcairn Aviation. Pitcairn won a government cont, to name a few.
Passenger service during the early 1920s was sporadic at best: most airlines at the time were focused on carrying bags of mail. In 1925, however, Ford Motor Company bought out the Stout Aircraft Company and began construction of the all-metal Ford TrimotorThe Ford Trimotor was a three engine civil transport aircraft first produced in 1926 by Henry Ford and continued until about 1931. It was also popular with the military and was sold all over the world. Unlike his famous cars and farm tractors, Ford did no, the first successful American airliner. With a 12-passenger capacity, it made passenger service potentially profitable. Air service became parallel to rail service in the American transportation network.
At the same time, Juan TrippeJuan Terry Trippe ( June 27, 1899 April 3, 1981) was an airline entrepreneur and pioneer. Trippe graduated from Yale in 1921 and he worked at Wall Street shortly, but became bored with work there very soon after. He received inheritance money and started began a crusade to create an air network that would link America to the world, and he achieved this goal through his airline, Pan American World AirwaysPan American World Airways (Pan Am) was the United States' principal international airline from the 1930s until its collapse in the late 1991, and was credited with many innovations that shaped the international airline industry. An attempt was made to re, with a fleet of flying boats that linked Los Angeles to Shanghai and Boston to London. Pan Am was the only U.S. airline to go international before the 1940s, and quickly became a symbol of the potential of the American airline industry.
With the introduction of the Boeing 247 and Douglas DC-3 in the 1930s, the U.S. airline industry continued to build up profitability, despite the Great Depression. This trend continued until the beginning of World War II.
