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THE AIRPLANE INDUSTRY

The Beginnings The first form of man-made flying objects were kites. The earliest known record of kite flying is from around 200 BC in China, when a general flew a kite over enemy territory to calculate the length of tunnel required to enter the region. Leonardo da Vinci's dream of flight found expression in several designs, but he did not attempt to demonstrate his ideas by actually constructing them. On 21 November, the Montgolfiers launched the first free flight with human passengers. King Louis XVI had originally decreed that condemned criminals would be the first pilots, but Jean-Franois Piltre de Rozier, successfully petitioned for the honor. They drifted 8 km in a balloon powered by a wood fire. Heavier than air The Wrights made the first sustained, controlled, powered heavier-thanair manned flight at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, four miles (8 km) south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17, 1903. The first flight by Orville Wright, of 120 feet (37 m) in 12 seconds, was recorded in a famous photograph. In the fourth flight of the same day, Wilbur Wright flew 852 feet (260 m) in 59 seconds.

THE COLD WAR BENEFITS


After World War II, commercial aviation grew rapidly, using mostly ex-military aircraft to transport people and cargo. In October 1947 Chuck Yeager took the rocket-powered Bell X-1 through the sound barrier. In 1961, the sky was no longer the limit for manned flight, as Yuri Gagarin orbited once around the planet within 108 minutes, and then used the descent module of Vostok I to safely reenter the atmosphere and reduce speed from Mach 25 using friction and converting velocity into heat. In the same year that Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the moon, and Boeing unveiled the Boeing 747 and the Arospatiale-BAC Concorde supersonic passenger airliner had its maiden flight. The Boeing 747 was the largest commercial passenger aircraft ever to fly, and still carries millions of passengers each year, though it has been superseded by the Airbus A380, which is capable of carrying up to 853 passengers. The last quarter of the 20th century saw a slowing of the pace of advancement. No longer was revolutionary progress made in flight speeds, distances and technology.

2001PRESENT
On September 11, stunned flight attendants and pilots learned that workplaces just like theirs had been transformed into lethal missiles.The September 11 catastrophe hit the airline industry hard, but it also opened the door for airlines to accelerate the restructuring they already had underway. After the events of 9/11, the domestic commercial airline industry went into a precipitous freefall, prompting consolidation of several airlines and bankruptcies of others. Elimination of airlines, through consolidation or bankruptcy, benefit both revenues--through higher fares--and costs by eliminating redundant expenses and routes. Additional terrorist attacks or declines in the overall domestic economy could accelerate consolidation as weaker airlines get acquired by financially stronger ones or become insolvent. In commercial aviation, the early 21st century saw the end of an era with the retirement of Concorde. Only commercially viable in niche markets, the planes were required to fly over the oceans if they wanted to break the sound barrier. Concorde was fuel hungry and could carry a limited amount of passengers due to its highly streamlined design. Nevertheless, it seems to have made a significant operating profit for British Airways.

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