From a flying start to happy landings

As this year marks the 100th anniversary of the first flight, Paul Duffy looks at how the role of aircraft has changed since then, and how Ireland has played a key role in world aviation

One of the most significant technological developments of the 20th century was aviation. On December 17th, 1903, Orville Wright made the first successful flight in a powered aircraft when his Wright Flyer flew about 500 feet through the air in 12 seconds near the small town of Kitty Hawk, in North Carolina.

A century later, about five million people travel by air every day, most at speeds and altitudes that would have seemed unbelievable in the early days. And aviation has prompted many inventions that are now part of our lives.

Often initiated by the military, materials such as plastics, ceramics and metal alloys have resulted from aviation's need for strength without weight. Its parallel needs to reduce the space it requires, operate at higher and therefore lower temperatures and to have better electrical and communications tools have resulted in satellites, computers and digital equipment accelerating development in many areas.

The establishment of the Irish Air Corps in 1922 began to build a competent, well-trained cadre of aviation professionals for the country. Although it was essentially military, the policy has been to use it more as an aid to civil power, with search and rescue, Garda patrols and Government transportation some of its main tasks. It played an important role in building the national airline, Aer Lingus, which started operations from Baldonnel Aerodrome (later renamed Casement Aerodrome) in 1936, and the airline has since contributed a remarkable number of quality personnel to the promotion of Ireland's tourism, business and industrial development.

Ireland has played an important role in aviation's development, partly because it is the nearest part of Europe to North America. In June 1919, Ireland established a position as one of the four corners of the aviation world, when the first aircraft to cross the Atlantic landed, not very elegantly, near Clifden, in Co Galway. John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown, two former military pilots using a converted Vickers Vimy bomber, flew from Newfoundland to Ireland in 16 hours, 28 minutes. The green field they chose for landing turned out to be a soft bog, and the aircraft pitched on to its nose, fortunately with no serious injuries to the two men.

Eight years later, in May 1927, Charles Lindbergh flew Spirit of St Louis, his Ryan monoplane, just south of the Irish coast on his way to Paris, becoming the first solo pilot to cross the Atlantic. He was the first to label Ireland as "one of the four corners of the world". Later, he became one of the team to select a site in Rineanna, Co Clare, for the transatlantic gateway now known as Shannon Airport.

With prevailing winds assisting travel from west to east, it was always more difficult to fly the other way. As the aircraft needed to be able to fly for longer, it took until April 1928 for the first flight from Europe to North America to be completed. Bremen, a Junkers W 33 monoplane, was commanded by Capt Hermann Köhl, with Baron Gunther von Hünefeld, who funded most of the trip, as crew. At Baldonnel, where they came in order to start their flight as close as possible to North America, they invited Capt James Fitzmaurice, the Irish Air Corps' commanding officer, to join them as co-pilot. Their aircraft landed safely on Greenly Island, between Newfoundland and Quebec, the next morning, and the three received a hero's welcome, including a ticker-tape parade in New York.

Over the next few years, other famous aviators, including Charles Kingsford Smith, Amy Johnson and Jim Mollison, visited Ireland on their epic voyages.

An international convention in Ottawa in December 1935 laid the first guidelines for the development of regular transatlantic air services, and Ireland was regarded as an essential stopover. The government began to search for a suitable base for both seaplane and conventional aircraft services. As well as Rineanna - approved by Lindbergh as technical adviser to Pan American World Airways - it chose Foynes, in Co Limerick.

After several years of tests the first commercial transatlantic air service - provided by a Boeing flying boat - took off from Foynes on June 28th, 1939. Commanded by Pan American's Capt Harold Gray, the flight marked the start of a service that would continue throughout the second World War, but ended in October 1945.

Rineanna, or Shannon Airport, received its first commercial transatlantic landplane service in 1945, and for the next 15 years it was the European landfall of most such services.

As the second World War drew to a close, many nations began to plan for the next stage of civil aviation. A conference in Chicago in 1944 set up the International Civil Aviation Organisation and tasked it with establishing standards in every aspect of international aviation, to be adopted by each nation signing the conference convention. It now has 188 members, and although nations are entitled to seek higher standards than those it lays down, they must not be lower. It audits each country to ensure compliance, and any nation failing to meet the standards may find its aircraft and airlines barred from operating to other countries.

The second World War was the time when aviation grew up. The increasing use of aircraft by the major countries' air forces led to considerable growth in size, carrying capacity and range. The years following the war saw jet aircraft come into service, allowing airlines to reduce the cost of tickets and make flying possible even for the man in the street. The 25 years after the war saw aircraft grow larger and faster, carrying more people for much longer distances. The long-range DC-4 aircraft in service when the war ended were just about able to carry 50 passengers across the Atlantic at 250 miles an hour. Twenty-five years later the Boeing 747 could carry more than 400 passengers across the Pacific at in excess of 500 miles an hour.

As jets replaced piston-engined aircraft on the Atlantic they began to be able to fly greater distances non-stop, meaning they no longer needed to refuel at Shannon. The airport fought to maintain a market; first came the government policy that all transatlantic aircraft serving Ireland must stop at Shannon. This penalised mostly Aer Lingus by adding to the costs of its fuel, airport charges and maintenance. It also reduced demand from foreign airlines wanting to serve Ireland. Shannon management has balanced this to some extent by widening its target market, with Aeroflot and, more recently, some Middle Eastern and Asian carriers using the airport, but it continues to need new airlines to keep the airport viable.

In the years following the introduction of jet aircraft, Aer Lingus began to assist airlines in other countries, mostly in Africa, to manage operations, train personnel and maintain aircraft. It also inadvertently became part of the development of a new industry: aviation leasing. This started when it bought two Boeing 747s at the start of the 1970s. As it needed them mostly for the summer season, it leased them to a US carrier for the off-peak months. But the US carrier failed and so did not take up the leases. A team at the airline looked for other customers.

The market turned out to offer considerable scope, and one of the team, Tony Ryan, asked Aer Lingus for authority to establish a leasing subsidiary. The airline decided against the proposal, so Ryan instead set up Guinness Peat Aviation. Over the next 20 years, GPA developed a minor industry into a major source of aircraft finance, controlling more than 600 aircraft by 1990. A badly timed attempt to secure further finance early in the 1990s resulted in the company being taken over by General Electric Capital Aviation Services, but Irish legislation has allowed the country to remain a leader in the industry, and most of the key players retain offices in Shannon or Dublin, at the International Financial Services Centre.

Ryan's team also led to the creation of maintenance companies in Shannon: Shannon Aerospace and several specialist engine component industries, now substantially owned by Lufthansa, the German national airline.

With the introduction of the Boeing 747 and the supersonic Concorde at the end of the 1960s and early 1970s, came the end of almost 70 years of aircraft getting larger and faster. Since then the changes have been less noticeable but just as important.

Most of the emphasis has been on improving quality in the industry, making aviation safer and more economical. Today most airlines, aircraft-maintenance providers and aviation authorities have worked to gain a quality certificate from the International Organisation for Standardisation.

New technology and the increasing use of satellites have meant a considerable improvement in the information aircraft crew can use to let them know where they are and of any other aircraft likely to cross their flight paths. This technology is continually developing.

To achieve the best potential, the regulatory authorities and the industry have had to develop a clear and visible line of responsibility for service, technical and operational standards. This, in turn has made aircraft and airlines generally safer. Although there are still too many accidents and incidents, aircraft are more than 10 times safer than they were in the 1950s and 1960s.

The Irish Aviation Authority is a member of Europe's Joint Aviation Authorities (JAA) and has adopted all the rules and standards required for European operation. The JAA's operational and flight-crew standards are regarded as the world's best, and International Civil Aviation Organisation is studying them with a view to introducing many as world standards.

Another Tony Ryan venture has become a harbinger of the changes facing the airline industry. From a small beginning in 1985, Ryanair has become a major force in Europe and changed the industry from a profession to a business. Modelled on US carrier Southwest Airlines, it has pushed the barriers forward by focusing on keeping costs low, standardising its equipment and making profits for shareholders. It caused a surge in the number of similar airlines and led the development of selling without commission by using the Internet as its primary sales tool.

Its low-cost focus has had a possibly unexpected effect: no longer is aviation a buzz industry, with well-trained professionals expecting lifetime employment. Lower wages mean it is likely to become just an entry-level employment. Maybe that would have happened anyway: new technologies and the development of computer-based and communications industries may well have overtaken the glamour and excitement previously offered by a career in aviation.

Today, the world's commercial aviation industry is in a crisis, supposedly triggered by September 11th. In fact, most of the problems were evident before then, and industry management had not refocused on monitoring costs, improving service, offering better value and closing safety and security gaps.

With a changing market, new technology and increased training and operational needs, there will be many challenges for the industry and its management in the coming century.

Few of us can imagine the progress and potential of aviation in the next 100 years, but already there are signs of remarkable developments in new materials - possibly they will be lighter, stronger and with increased flexibility, similar to that of birds' wings. One thing is clear: aviation a century from now will bear little similarity to that of today.