THE SEVEN AGES OF AIR TRANSPORT

This article describes the evolution of air transportation from pre-World War I transport aircrafts to the current wide-bodied airliners and the impacts these technologies had on the direction of the aviation industry. These developments affected market size and economies of scale, inventory holdings, methods of distribution and technological innovation. Yet the future of the airline industry will be limited by technology, economics, and operational feasibility. All logic, not to mention simple arithmetic, points to the development of the Very Large Airliner as the predominant passenger aircraft of the future.