These are my favourite air lines:. You cannot compete in time with airlines on transcontinental runs, but [trains] can outstrip them in comfort, safety, dependability of service, and also show the passenger the countryside. This, we believe, is a permanent market. I was engaged in what I believe to be the most thrilling industry in the world — aviation.
My heart still leaps when I see a tiny two-seater plane soaring gracefully through the sky. Our great liners awe me even today. President United Airlines. A commercial aircraft is a vehicle capable of supporting itself aerodynamically and economically at the same time.
Designer of the Ford Tri-Motor. Quoted in the book A History of Passenger Aircraft. As things are, flying is too expensive a mode of transport to be considered by the ordinary man or woman.
To the great majority with means, the deafening roar of the engines, the sense of danger, the great uncertainty, added to the not inconsiderable fare, more than balance the possible gain in time… The force of gravity ever pulling the plane and its load to earth, will ever set a limit to the achievements of aircraft and be an insurmountable barrier to commercial success in the air. First Europe, and then the globe, will be linked by flight, and nations so knit together that they will grow to be next-door neighbours.
What railways have done for nations, airways will do for the world. Last paragraph of last chapter, The Aeroplane, The passenger jet was, and still is, one of the wonders of the world, a world whose other wonders the jet made accessible. Along with the personal computer, it ranks as the greatest technological innovation of the second half of the twentieth century.
