Aviation, and air travel, has had a profound impact, both material and social, on American life. It has affected the way Americans live, the way they view themselves and the world around them, and the way they do business. Although difficult to measure, aviation's history suggests that it has contributed to widespread awareness of and connection to people and places very different from one's own.

Charles Lindbergh, the first person to fly an airplane nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean solo, called flying a "godlike act." For all of history, humanity had seen the world from the ground. It had relied solely upon transportation that moved across the ground and over or around its obstacles. Rivers and rough terrain blocked wagons and cars, with bridges and tunnels providing only small windows. Ships were vulnerable to winds that whipped the ocean into waves.

When Orville and Wilbur Wright flew history's first airplane for 120 short feet (36-1/2 meters) in North Carolina in 1903, the significance of their new invention was of course not yet apparent. The first passenger planes, barely 20 years later, did little to change that view. Several airmail services flying for the Post Office added a few seats for extra revenue, but their planes were noisy, cold, and uncomfortable. They couldn't fly over mountains, so passengers took trains for part of their journey. Nor could these planes, such as the Ford Trimotor, carry enough seats to make passenger traffic profitable. The train was still the way to go.

But Americans watched airplanes help the Nation and its allies France and Britain win World War I. After the war, daredevil pilots appeared across America. They were called "barnstormers" because their stunts included flying small planes through open barns. According to journalist Thomas Petzinger, schools would close and workers would leave businesses, to watch these people perform. Americans were awed to see that humans could fly in machines and dive and bank like a swift falcon or eagle.

In 1927, Lindbergh's transatlantic flight captured America's imagination. Lindbergh, himself a barnstormer, flew a small airplane, the Spirit of St. Louis, for 33 hours from New York to Paris. When his safe arrival in Paris was announced, league ballgames stopped, and radio announcers sobbed. Humans, who had always looked to the sky and stars with wonder, could now cross vast oceans with amazing speed by taking to the sky.

By the late 1930s, the airlines carried mail and passengers from coast to coast. The DC-3, a new airplane with powerful engines and an enclosed cabin, cut the cost of flying in half. It made airlines a profitable business. But at a cost of 5 cents per mile to transport one passenger, air travel was still expensive. Train travel cost only 1.3 cents per passenger mile and was still more comfortable. The average person usually couldn't afford to fly. But, according to aerospace writer T.A. Heppenheimer, a whole class of people, businessmen who put a money value on their time, could afford to fly on company expense accounts. They did, in soaring numbers.

Further developments during World War II sped the development of commercial aviation. Military airfields built for the war effort were afterwards sold to cities, which were eager to open their own commercial airports. Airplane manufacturers Douglas and Boeing built new airplanes with pressurized and heated cabins. Suddenly airplanes could fly above bad weather and mountains, where the air and thus the ride were smoother. In 1940, three million Americans flew. By 1956, 55 million flew.

In a country with a population of barely 150 million, large numbers of Americans were seeing the world from the air. Businessmen could meet with customers and partners and return home, in a fraction of the time required by ground travel. In a century where technological changes of all kinds were changing common expectations about life, medicines began to cure diseases, cars were beginning to make personal travel faster, electricity and plumbing simplified daily tasks and made daily life far more pleasant, the ability to fly was part of a growing sense of mastery over the world and control of one's destiny.

The first jet airliner, the Boeing 707, was introduced in 1959. It cut flying time between New York and London from twelve hours to six hours. Crossing the Atlantic Ocean had until recently required spending six days on a ship. By 1965, 95 percent of transatlantic travelers were crossing in the fast jets of Pan Am and European airlines such as British Overseas Air.

The average American had been inspired by the airplanes' role in America's success in winning World War II and protecting our country during the Cold War. Aviation became a primary symbol of the Nation's technological and imaginative prowess. Commercial airline travel became an economic powerhouse. By 1980, 400,000 people worked for the airlines, by 2000 the number was 750,000, more than worked in automobile manufacturing. Air travel also became incredibly safe. By the 1990s, a person was more likely to choke on one's meal than die in a plane accident.

But by the 1960s, air travelers were still mostly wealthy people and business people on expense accounts, who flew repeatedly. Most Americans could not afford to fly, to see their loved ones in other cities, or visit exciting vacation spots. We saw airplanes as part of daily life, from the ground.

In the 1970s and 1980's, a few visionary people began to open the skies to the average American with low fares. Since 1938, the Federal government had strictly regulated airline fares and routes. The government kept fares high to please airline investors and airline-employee unions. This policy kept airline costs high and priced air travel out of the reach of most Americans.

A Texas attorney named Herbert Kelleher figured out that if an airline flew just within a state, it would escape federal regulation. He founded Southwest Airlines, serving only Texas, in 1971. Backpackers, students, retirees, and even children commuting between divorced parents packed Southwest's Boeing 737s. Says Kelleher of the larger, high-cost airlines' failed attempts to destroy Southwest in court: "If Southwest didn't survive" and open the skies to the public, "something was very wrong about our whole system, about our whole society."

In 1978, President Jimmy Carter and Congress changed the situation drastically when they deregulated the airlines. Airlines could now choose their own routes and fares. Kelleher promptly expanded Southwest outside of Texas. By the 1990s, Southwest had become a national powerhouse. By the mid-1990s, the U.S. airline industry had, as Petzinger explains, "bifurcated" into two side-by-side airline industries.

First, there is the informal cartel of high-cost, large-network carriers such as American and United Airlines. They carry business people, and some leisure travelers, and fly the international routes. Second, there is the low-fare airline industry, of which Southwest, JetBlue, and AirTran are major players. Low-fare airlines vastly increase enplanements at airports nationwide, where the cartel would charge much higher fares.

Air traffic figures soared from 205 million in 1975 before deregulation, to 297 million in 1980 just after, to 638 million in 2000. By 1990, more adult Americans had flown than owned a car. But air travel's transformation from rarefied white-glove luxury to something like a public utility changed its public perception. "Though a novel experience" for millions of new travelers, according to Petzinger, "flying did not long remain a glamorous one for most. As something sold cheaply, flying was no longer something most people felt the slightest compulsion to dress up for, or otherwise regard with marvel." Families of the 1960s, he explained, would observe the airplanes they couldn't fly, from airport observation decks. By the 1990s, passengers booked tickets and endured overcrowded terminals.

Like the interstate highway system, airline travel has shrunk America's vast distances. Giant resorts such as Disney World in Orlando, and casinos in Las Vegas, teem with millions of visitors flown from hundreds, often thousands, of miles away. Air travel may no longer inspire, but it connects Americans of all economic means with their loved ones, with business partners, with customers, and vacations.

Along with highways, the Internet, and cable and satellite television, widely available air travel has helped connect Americans with the world outside of their own communities. And perhaps it has helped its citizens see themselves as members of a much larger world, with greater control over their destinies, than was possible for most people only 100 years ago.

- James C. Kruggel

Bibliography

Bilstein, Roger, “Air Travel and the Travelling Public: The American Experience, 1920-1970,” pp. 91-111, in William Trimble, ed., From Airships to Airbus: The History of Civil and Commercial Aviation,” vol. 2. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995.

Brooker, Katrina, "The Chairman Looks Back," Interview with Herbert Kelleher. Fortune (May 28, 2001): 62-76.

Heppenheimer, T.A. Turbulent Skies: The History of Commercial Aviation. New York: John Wiley, 1995.

Hudson, Kenneth, Air Travel: A Social History. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1972.

Hudson, Kenneth, and Julian Pettifer, Diamonds in the Sky: A Social History of Air Travel. London: Bodley Head / BBC, 1979.

Petzinger, Jr., Thomas. Hard Landing. New York: Three Rivers, 1996

Kruggel, James C. "Simplify, Simplify, Simplify: How Simplifying Fleets Might Help America's Largest Airlines Return to Profitability," www.Airliners.net, June 16, 2002. http://www.airliners.net/articles/read.main?id=23

U.S. Department of Transportation Bureau of Transportation Statistics," Airport Activity Statistics of Certificated Air Carriers Summary Tables, Twelve Months Ending December 31, 2000." BTS01-05 Washington, DC: 2001. http://www.bts.gov/publications/airactstats2000/AAS-2000.pdf