ABSTRACT
While the first successful flight of a manned fixed wing aircraft occurred in 1903, it took another eleven years for the first passenger-carrying fixed wing flight, which occurred on January 1, 1914 between St. Petersburg, Florida and Tampa, Florida across Tampa Bay using a Benoist XIV flying boat (Glines, 1997). It then took a further two years before we saw the first fixed wing airline in operation. This occurred in Europe with the “Aircraft Transport and Travel” (AT&T) airline, formed by George Holt Thomas in 1916. AT&T used a fleet of former military Airco DH.4A biplanes that had been modified to carry two passengers in the fuselage; it operated flights between Folkestone in the UK and Ghent in Belgium.
