Historical Development of Air Transport
The historical development of air transport starts with a short review of myths and legends, the Dream of flying, which is as old as mankind. The next part covers the physically based approach of flying, starting from Da Vinci and his drawings of flying v
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Historical Development of Air Transport
Abstract The historical development of air transport starts with a short review of myths and legends, the Dream of flying, which is as old as mankind. The next part covers the physically based approach of flying, starting from Da Vinci and his drawings of flying vehicles, via the Montgolfier’s hot air balloon, Sir George Cayley and his principles of flying. The part about the technically based approach covers briefly the different attempts from Clement Ader, Otto Lilienthal up to the Wright brothers, who finally in 1903 managed to fly with a vehicle heavier than air. It follows the beginning of commercial air transport in Europe and US between the two World Wars. In the 1950s, the jet age in civil air transport started with a disaster of Comet, but all lessons learned from these air accidents helped other companies to start successfully these new jet engine types of civil transport aircraft, which are still flying today. The aircraft design parameters of speed, range, size and fuel efficiency and their development of the last century are shortly addressed to extract the standards and the maturity of today’s air transport system. A brief review of the airline development follows with the example of KLM. It follows a short airport review, where the airport development of Atlanta—the biggest airport today—is taken as example.
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The Dream of Flying
The dream of flying is as old as mankind. In all civilizations (old and new like Greek, Chinese, Roman, Inca, Celt et alii.) Gods have certain capabilities to fly and pass easily between earth and heaven. Some courageous people tried to copy this capability by intensively watching the flight of birds and adapting certain mechanisms from them. The Greek mythology tells about the genius Daedalus, who was at his time an excellent artist and innovator. As the king of Crete named Minos wanted to keep his capabilities as architect just for his personal and own profit, Daedalus decided to escape by constructing and building a flying vehicle, which
© Springer-Verlag Wien 2016 D. Schmitt and V. Gollnick, Air Transport System, DOI 10.1007/978-3-7091-1880-1_2
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consisted of feathers, “fixed by thread and wax, thus constructing the wings with a certain camber just like the birds.” [1]. In China, Kites were constructed and also played some mystic role as element between heaven and earth. But details about their technical efforts and achievements are not so well documented. The Christian religion knows also some persons with flying capabilities, angels and devils, who can—with the help of wings—travel between heaven and earth and underworld/hell. An excellent description of these old myths and first attempts of flying is given in [2], where certain myths about flying attempts in nearly all culture have been found. These ideas and legends of flying are part of cultural or religious habits. Behind the imagination of flying, which can be found in all old cultures and civilizations, there are also the
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