ABSTRACT
Civil aviation is, to most aircraft manufacturers and states alike, an indivisible part of the larger concept of aerospace which is unavoidably influenced by defence considerations. This chapter reviews how the market environment has affected the activities of aircraft manufacturers. It traces the ways in which aircraft firms have responded to what was initially for a time in the 1970s a depressing market and what is now a more promising situation. In US parlance, general aviation covers aircraft used for "transporting company executives, salesmen, and other personnel for business purposes, air taxi services, crop dusting, surveying, advertising, photography, and recreational and instructional flying." Commercial aviation is the province of the air carriers, or those organisations licensed to transport passengers or cargo on well-defined routes. The general aviation market is, like that of commercial aviation, dominated by the USA.
