page_title: Airline
section_title: Since 1945
hierarchical_section_title: Airline / History / United States / Since 1945
caption_attribution_description: Nederlands: Collectie / Archief&#160;: Fotocollectie Anefo Reportage / Serie&#160;: [ onbekend ] Beschrijving&#160;: Stratocruiser op Schiphol Datum&#160;: 4 september 1949 Instellingsnaam&#160;: Boeing C-97 Stratocruiser Fotograaf&#160;: Merk, Ben / Anefo Auteursrechthebbende&#160;: Nationaal Archief Materiaalsoort&#160;: Glasnegatief Nummer archiefinventaris&#160;: bekijk toegang 2.24.01.09 Bestanddeelnummer&#160;: 903-5913
context_page_description: An airline is a company that provides air transport services for traveling passengers and freight. Airlines utilize aircraft to supply these services and may form partnerships or alliances with other airlines for codeshare agreements, in which they both offer and operate the same flight. Generally, airline companies are recognized with an air operating certificate or license issued by a governmental aviation body. Airlines may be scheduled or charter operators.
  The first airline was the German airship company DELAG, founded on 16 November 1909. The four oldest non-airship airlines that still exist are the Netherlands' KLM, Colombia's Avianca, Australia's Qantas and the Czech Republic's Czech Airlines.
  Airline ownership has seen a shift from mostly personal ownership until the 1930s to government-ownership of major airlines from the 1940s to 1980s and back to large-scale privatization following the mid-1980s. Since the 1980s, there has also been a trend of major airline mergers and the formation of airline alliances. The largest alliances are Star Alliance, SkyTeam and Oneworld, and these three collectively accounted for more than 60% of global commercial air traffic in 2015.
context_section_description: World War II, like World War I, brought new life to the airline industry. Many airlines in the Allied countries were flush from lease contracts to the military, and foresaw a future explosive demand for civil air transport, for both passengers and cargo. They were eager to invest in the newly emerging flagships of air travel such as the Boeing Stratocruiser, Lockheed Constellation, and Douglas DC-6. Most of these new aircraft were based on American bombers such as the B-29, which had spearheaded research into new technologies such as pressurization. Most offered increased efficiency from both added speed and greater payload.
  In the 1950s, the De Havilland Comet, Boeing 707, Douglas DC-8, and Sud Aviation Caravelle became the first flagships of the Jet Age in the West, while the Eastern bloc had Tupolev Tu-104 and Tupolev Tu-124 in the fleets of state-owned carriers such as Czechoslovak ČSA, Soviet Aeroflot and East-German Interflug. The Vickers Viscount and Lockheed L-188 Electra inaugurated turboprop transport.
  On 4 October 1958, BOAC started transatlantic flights between London Heathrow and New York Idlewild with a Comet 4, and Pan Am followed on 26 October with a B707 service between New York and Paris.
  The next big boost for the airlines would come in the 1970s, when the Boeing 747, McDonnell Douglas DC-10, and Lockheed L-1011 inaugurated widebody ("jumbo jet") service, which is still the standard in international travel. The Tupolev Tu-144 and its Western counterpart, Concorde, made supersonic travel a reality. Concorde first flew in 1969 and operated through 2003. In 1972, Airbus began producing Europe's most commercially successful line of airliners to date. The added efficiencies for these aircraft were often not in speed, but in passenger capacity, payload, and range. Airbus also features modern electronic cockpits that were common across their aircraft to enable pilots to fly multiple models with minimal cross-training.
caption: Boeing 377 of American Export Airlines, the first airline to offer landplane flights across the North Atlantic in October 1945.[43]
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