Question

Explain the significance of Charles Lindbergh's epic flight to the growth of aviation.

Answer 1

Charles Lindbergh was a famous aviator. In 1927 he became the first man to successfully fly an airplane across the Atlantic Ocean. He called his airplane the Spirit of St. Louis, and his courageous feat helped make Missouri a leader in the developing world of aviation.

Because of Lindbergh’s flight, aviation stocks soared. For a short time, even the stock of a small eastern company called Seaboard Airline saw activity—until it was discovered that the corporation was actually a railroad. As financial investors came forward, more and more fledgling airlines began to emerge. By the end of the 1920s, there were forty-four scheduled United States airlines, and many nonscheduled ones. Commercial airplanes began serving Raleigh in September 1929. One line flew passengers to New York, and another offered service to Charlotte and Atlanta.

His demonstration of the reliability and safety of airplanes led to increase interest in air travel among Americans.Charles Lindbergh had a great impact on aviation within Missouri and the nation as well. The Spirit of St. Louis Organization hoped that Lindbergh’s feat would bring fame to the city, and the group’s dreams were certainly realized. Throughout the eighty years since Lindbergh’s historic flight, St. Louis has been a continuous leader in aviation. Lambert Field, now Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, became a major airline hub in part because of Lindbergh’s promotion of it. In 1959 St. Louis inaugurated the “Jet Transportation Era” when Trans World Airlines began offering Boeing 707 service from Lambert Field. St. Louis also became an aerospace industry leader by supporting companies like McDonnell-Douglass, which merged with Boeing in 1997. The company produced a variety of civilian and military aircraft and participated in NASA’s Mercury spacecraft program. Although Charles Lindbergh became a national icon, his efforts to fly across the Atlantic brought notoriety to himself and the city that supported him.

After his transatlantic flight, Charles Lindbergh used his fame to promote the development of aviation. At the request of the Guggenheim Fund for the Promotion of Aeronautics, Lindbergh toured the United States in the Spirit of St. Louis during the summer and fall of 1927. Traveling a total of 22,350 miles, he visited seventy-five cities and dropped messages over towns where he couldn’t stop.

Americans were wild about aviation in the 1920s and '30s, the period between the two world wars that came to be known as the Golden Age of Flight. Air races and daring record-setting flights dominated the news. Airplanes evolved from wood-and-fabric biplanes to streamlined metal monoplanes.

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.

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.