From Flight Global:
RETROSPECTIVE: The centenary of international air services
In a year that marks so many important aviation anniversaries, the month of August has possibly the most significant of them all. For on 25 August 1919, a small British-built biplane took off from heathland close to where London Heathrow is today, beginning the first-ever daily international passenger air service.
Flight covered the historic inauguration in its 28 August edition under the rather innocuous headline “The London-Paris Air Service”, reporting that it was organised by “Messrs. Aircraft Transport and Travel, Ltd. Two Airco machines set out from this side and one machine from Paris.”
While other passenger air services had been flown before, aviation historians point to the Aircraft Transport and Travel (AT&T) operation between Hounslow Heath and Le Bourget as the true beginning of international flights, as it marked the first daily international passenger, mail and passenger service. None of the previous flights had combined all these.
Only 100 years and we have gone from this:
To the Moon and around the world. Tip of the hat to Peter Grant at Bayou Renaissance Man for the link.
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