Zig-Zag-And-Swirl?
April 9, 2011 9:52 PM   Subscribe

Who designed, built and flew the worlds first commercial passenger airplane?
posted by clavdivs to Travel & Transportation (8 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
what exactly are you after? first scheduled service? first purpose-built commercial passenger airplane (as opposed to repurposed military aircraft)? specifically airplanes rather than zeppelins?
posted by russm at 10:00 PM on April 9, 2011




The first person to fly across the Atlantic as a passenger (if you don't count Lord Peter Wimsey) would be Charles Albert Levine in 1927.

Fun fact learned in the process of looking for that: In 1931, the airship Graf Zeppelin began offering regular scheduled passenger service between Germany and South America.
posted by you're a kitty! at 10:04 PM on April 9, 2011


for example, the Airco DH.4 was built as a 2-seat bomber, but was used for scheduled commercial flights after the end of WWI. as I understand it, the commercial aviation business was largely built on this sort of surplus aircraft until demand was high enough to justify building purpose-designed passenger carrying aircrsft.
posted by russm at 10:08 PM on April 9, 2011 [2 favorites]


I researched this for an aviation timeline I designed years ago in college. I don't remember the source but here's the relevant chunk of text from the timeline:

January 1st 1914. The world's first scheduled airplane passenger service operated by an airline company—The Airboat Line—began at 10:00 AM when Anthony Jannus flew his first passenger from St. Petersburg to Tampa, FL. The aircraft was a two-seat Benoist Type XIV flying boat of the Benoist Company. The fare for the 22-mile over-water flight was $5 with a surcharge if the passenger weighed more than 200 pounds.
posted by Jeff Howard at 11:11 PM on April 9, 2011


I think the asker wants to know who made the first aircraft designed specifically for carrying passengers. Wikipedia says it is this.
posted by gjc at 7:58 AM on April 10, 2011


De Havilland was my memory. It does look like Sikorsky technically beat them, though. This is one of those questions that hinges on specific definitions, e.g. of "commercial". I note that clavdivs did not say "scheduled".
posted by dhartung at 4:05 PM on April 10, 2011


"Zig-zag and Swirl" is the title of the chapter on Alfred William Lawson in Martin Gardner's In the Name of Science.

I read it in Junior High, and the Lawson essay made me laugh so hard my diaphragm was sore the next day. The Wikipedia article claims that the head of the Skeptics Society gives Gardner's book credit for kicking off the entire skeptic movement.

Lawson's Wikipedia article says "He is frequently cited as the inventor of the airliner...", but Lawson could have given lessons in self-promotion to Bucky Fuller, and I think any such citation should be accepted with the greatest caution, if at all, especially since Lawson's magazines were given to publishing panegyrics to him under names like "Cy Q. Faunce"-- which could be taken as evidence he had more of a sense of humor than we are normally willing to grant cranks, I suppose.
posted by jamjam at 3:00 PM on September 16, 2011


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