ABSTRACT
A brief understanding of air transport history and its heritage will help understand and appreciate the development and the application of aviation human factors. In a far-reaching government decree, Great Britain combined all of its fledging and struggling airlines into 'the chosen instrument of the state for the development of air transport on a commercial basis'. By the middle 1930s the Germans, while competing directly with Air France and Britain's Imperial Airways, had the largest commercial aviation system in Europe and were actively involved in South America. The heritage left by those who formed the airline industry in the United States must include something of the extraordinary history of Pan American World Airways. Political thinking in Washington favored the concept of a 'chosen instrument' for international flying and Pan American World Airways was a natural choice. Sikorsky had designed and built the first of the famous Pan American 'Clippers', the S-40s.
