Today, 1st January 2014, marks the 100th anniversary of the first commercial flight: a 23-minute hop across Florida’s Tampa Bay. The St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line was subsidized by St. Petersburg officials who wanted more winter tourists in their city. The alternative: an 11-hour train ride from Tampa.
Pilot Tony Jannus had room for just one passenger, who sat next to him in the open cockpit. Three months later — when tourism season ended — so did the subsidy. The airline had carried 1,204 passengers but would never fly again.
The flight lasted only 23 minutes and maintained an altitude of less than 5oft.
The aviation industry has come a long way since then: eight million people are expected to board planes today and 52 planes take off all over the world every minute with over 5,700 passengers on board.
Apart from human beings planes now carry 50 million tons of cargo every year representing 35% of world trade value or about £7.5m worth of cargo every minute.