Airline

For other uses, see Airline (disambiguation).

1930s German poster advertising a weekly airmail service from Deutsche Lufthansa, Syndicato Condor and Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei

An airline is a company that provides air transport services for traveling passengers or freight. Airlines use aircraft to supply these services and may form partnerships or alliances with other airlines for codeshare agreements, in which they both offer and operate the same flight. Generally, airline companies are recognized with an air operating certificate or license issued by a governmental aviation body. Airlines may be scheduled or charter operators.

The first airline was the German airship company DELAG, founded on November 16, 1909.[1] The four oldest non-airship airlines that still exist are the Netherlands' KLM (1919),[2] Colombia's Avianca (1919),[3] Australia's Qantas (1920)[4] and the Russian Aeroflot (1923).[2]

Airline ownership has seen a shift from mostly personal ownership until the 1930s to government-ownership of major airlines from the 1940s to 1980s and back to large-scale privatization following the mid-1980s.[5] Since the 1980s, there has been a trend of major airline mergers and the formation of airline alliances. The largest alliances are Star Alliance, SkyTeam and Oneworld. Airline alliances coordinate their passenger service programs (such as lounges and frequent-flyer programs), offer special interline tickets and often engage in extensive codesharing (sometimes systemwide).

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ a b Miquel Ros (November 1, 2023). "10 oldest airlines in the world". edition.cnn.com. CNN. Retrieved May 9, 2024.
  3. ^ "History - Avianca Holdings S.A. - www.aviancaholdings.com". www.aviancaholdings.com. Archived from the original on October 15, 2017. Retrieved October 14, 2017.
  4. ^ "Founders of Qantas | Qantas". www.qantas.com. Retrieved October 14, 2017.
  5. ^ Doganis, Rigas (2001). The Airline Business in the Twenty-first Century. Psychology Press. p. 185. ISBN 978-0-415-20883-3.