Since the dawn of time, man has travelled: whether out of curiosity, or to gain access to resources – and not much has changed. One of the most popular “trade” routes today is still the transatlantic crossing, especially between the great commercial centres of London and New York, plied regularly by business people, tourists and shoppers on the hunt for a bargain.
The first commonly accepted crossing of the Atlantic was made by Christopher Columbus in 1492 in a bid to find a route to the east, and his voyage was significant in opening up the route to America from Europe.
According to a Duke University research paper on the passenger ship industry, the earliest voyages were not concerned with passengers but rather with cargo. The Black Ball Line in 1818 was the first shipping company to offer scheduled services from the US to England. But in the centuries leading up to the 1800s, there was a steady stream of immigrants - the English pilgrims, Dutch, Basque, French, Irish and Scots - making the hazardous crossing to reach America.
The early 1800s saw a rise in immigration to the US that grew steadily through the century, driven by famine in Europe, eased travel restrictions by Britain and the steam ship. Between 1892 and 1924, more than 24m passengers and crew passed through Ellis Island and the Port of New York.
Of course a darker form of transatlantic travel had been taking place for centuries: since the 1300s slaves had been captured from the west coast of Africa and transported across the Atlantic to Europe, and later centuries saw African slaves shipped en masse to the New World.
By the late 1800s voyages between London and New York were being made on ships geared to carry passengers, rather than mail and cargo. The most famous of these cruise ships came a little later: the Titanic, at the time the largest passenger liner ever built, sank in 1912.
But while the liners were in their heyday, progress on the aviation front posed fresh possibilities for travellers. The first nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean, from Newfoundland, Canada, to Ireland, was made by two British aviators, John W Alcock and Arthur W. Brown on June 14 and 15, 1919. This success was followed by the first solo flight, made by Charles Lindbergh in the Spirit of St Louis in May 1927, and it was this historic moment that “excited the imagination of many who dared to dream of regular flights across the vast expanse of ocean”, says Asif Siddiqi, for the US Centennial of Flight Commission website.
Initial forays into transatlantic crossing by aeroplane focused on the southern Atlantic because the northern route’s unpredictable weather, distances and lack of stopping points made it untenable. Hundreds of transatlantic crossing were made during this time in zeppelins, including the Graf Zeppelin and the Hindenburg.
Mr Siddiqi says airlines such as the British Imperial Airways and Pan American Airways decided to use flying boats because concrete runways were rare, and also because landplanes at the time were incapable of flying such distances without refuelling. Most aircraft made refuelling stops at airports such as Gander in Newfoundland.
A turning point came on December 9 1937, when Pan Am invited bids from eight US airplane manufacturers to build a 100-seat long-range airliner. Boeing won with its legendary B-314 flying boat, the largest commercial plane to fly until the jumbo jets 30 years later.
With increased confidence in the B-314, Pan Am began transatlantic passenger service in 1939. Passengers paid $375 for a one-way trip.
American Export became the world’s first airline to offer regularly scheduled landplane commercial flights across the North Atlantic, using the DC-4. Pan Am followed suit, and then graduated to the new Lockheed Constellation and Super Constellation aircraft, with pressurised cabins that allowed them to fly as high as 20,000 feet, and which would have made the journey less turbulent for passengers.
In August 1947, Pan American began regular non-stop flights between New York and London using these aircraft. Ravaged by the war, the European airlines were in a weak position and the routes were dominated by the American airlines, but by the later 1940s, Scandinavian Airlines System, the Royal Dutch Airlines, Air France, Belgium’s SABENA, and Swissair were all carrying passengers across the Atlantic as part of a new postwar air travel boom.
By 1950 the transatlantic route had become the world’s number one in terms of traffic, and even today the traffic on this route is increasing almost daily. Patrick Horwood, of National Air Traffic Services, says that for October 2007, there were 9,217 arrivals and departures from the US into UK airspace. This compares to 8,826 for the same month in October 2006, an increase of 4.4 per cent.
The first jet plane services began in the late 1950s, and supersonic service, in the form of Concorde, was offered from 1976 to 2003.
The latest addition to enter commercial service is the huge Airbus A380, which can carry more passengers than ever before.
On long-haul routes like those across the Atlantic, because gaps in air traffic control and radar coverage over large stretches of ocean and the lack of regular stopping points, safety is paramount. Chris Mason of the Civil Aviation Authority says: “Safety levels are as high as they have ever been, and the industry as a whole is committed and always looking at ways to increase air travel safety.”
“Aeroplane engines are more reliable than ever before, and warning systems in the air and on the ground are very sophisticated – a lot has been done over the years to develop a safety culture in the industry.”
Since the first primitive sail-boats, modern adventurers have made the crossing in hot-air balloons, solar-powered aircraft and even by canoe. But the ideal way to get there and back is by aeroplane, the faster the better, and perhaps this will take the form one day of another supersonic miracle.
