ABSTRACT
The earliest airline entrepreneurs could not have foreseen just how successful their idea would become. The oldest airline (KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, The Netherlands) was established in the northern hemisphere in 1919; the second oldest (Qantas, Australia) was established in the southern hemisphere in 1920. Flying between The Netherlands and Australia could take weeks – changing planes, hopping over vast continents, landing and taking off from one hewn airstrip to another. In those early decades, flying was a luxury and an aspiration. Since then, technology has progressed so that the same journey can be completed in a little over 24 hours with one stop in between, and what was once the preserve of the adventurous, famous and rich has now become the travel of the masses. Democratised air travel has arrived.
