Tourism through the Ages - Tourism: Principles, Practices, Philosophies - page 42

Automobiles dominate travel today, but visiting the National Automobile Museum (Harrah Collection)
in Reno, Nevada, provides an appreciation of the old days, when cars were not quite so comfortable.
PhotocourtesyofRenoNewsBureau.

Air Travel

Nearly 16 years after the airplane s rst flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, in 1903, regularly

scheduled air service began in Germany. This was a Berlin

'

Weimar route, and the carrier later
became known as Deutsche Lufthansa. Today, Lufthansa is a major international airline. The rst
transatlantic passenger was Charles A. Levine, who ew with Clarence Chamberlin nonstop fromNew
York to Germany. The plane made a forced landing 118 miles fromBerlin, their destination, which they
reached on June 7, 1927. This was shortly after Charles Lindbergh

- Leipzig -

' s historic solo flight from New York

to Paris.
The first U.S. airline, Varney Airlines, was launched in 1926 and provided scheduled airmail service.
However, this airline was formed only 11 days before Western Airlines, which began service on April 17,
1926. Varney Airlines later merged with three other lines to form United Air Lines. On April 1, 1987,
Western merged with Delta Air Lines. At first, only one passenger was carried in addition to the mail, if
the weight limitations permitted. The first international mail route was own by Pan American

Airways from Key West, Florida, to Havana, Cuba, on October 28, 1927. Pan Am ew the rst

passengers on the same route on January 16, 1928. The trip took 1 hour 10 minutes, and the fare was
$50 each way.
The various U.S. airlines gradually expanded their services to more cities and international
destinations. During World War II, their equipment and most staff were devoted to war service.
Development of the DC-3 and the Boeing 314A transoceanic Clipper in the early 1940s established
paying passenger traf c and brought about much wider acceptance of . The jet engine,

invented in England by Frank Whittle, was used on such military planes as the B-52. The first American
commercial jet was the Boeing 707. The first U.S. transcontinental jet flight was operated by American
Airlines on January 25, 1959, from Los Angeles to New York City, and the jumbo jet era began in
January 1970, when Pan American World Airways flew 352 passengers fromNew York to London using
the new Boeing 747 equipment.
The Concorde ushered in the era of supersonic flight. The Concorde was a product of a joint
British

air travel

- French venture. A prototype was unveiled in 1967, and the jet made its rst test flight in