Civil aviation

{{Main|Post-war aviation}}

After World War II, commercial aviation grew rapidly, using mostly ex-military pilots to transport people and cargo. Factories that had produced bombers were quickly adapted to the production of passenger aircraft like the Douglas DC-4. This growth was accelerated by the establishment of military airports throughout the world, either for combat use or training. These could easily be turned to civil aviation use. The first commercial jet airliner to fly was the British de Havilland DH.106 Comet. By 1952, the British state airline British Overseas Airways Corporation had introduced the Comet into scheduled service. While it was a technical achievement, the airplane suffered a series of highly public failures, as the shape of the windows led to cracks due to metal fatigue. By the time the problems were overcome, other jet airliner designs such as the Boeing 707 had already entered service.

The Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation was originally established in 1944; it states that signatories should collectively work to harmonize and standardize the use of airspace for safety, efficiency and regularity of air transport.{{cite web |url=http://www.icao.int/icaonet/dcs/7300.html |title=Doc 7300 |access-date=2008-09-03 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080914143035/http://www.icao.int/icaonet/dcs/7300.html |archive-date=2008-09-14 }} Each signatory country, of which there are at least 193, has a civil aviation authority (such as the Federal Aviation Administration in the United States) to oversee the following areas of civil aviation:{{Citation needed|date=August 2012}}

• Personnel licensing — regulating the basic training and issuance of licenses and certificates.
• Flight operations — carrying out safety oversight of commercial operators.
• Airworthiness — issuing certificates of registration and certificates of airworthiness to civil aircraft, and overseeing the safety of aircraft maintenance organizations.
• Aerodromes — designing and constructing aerodrome facilities.
• Air traffic services — managing the traffic inside of a country's airspace.

The World Bank lists monotonously growing numbers for the number of passengers transported per year worldwide with a preliminary all-time high in 2015 of 3.44 billion passengers.{{cite web|url=http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IS.AIR.PSGR?end=2015&start=1970&view=chart|title=Air transport, passengers carried - International Civil Aviation Organization, Civil Aviation Statistics of the World and ICAO staff estimates|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170204003536/http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IS.AIR.PSGR?end=2015&start=1970&view=chart|archive-date=2017-02-04}} Likewise, the number of registered carrier departures worldwide has reached a peak in 2015 with almost 33 million takeoffs.{{cite web|title=Air transport, registered carrier departures worldwide- International Civil Aviation Organization, Civil Aviation Statistics of the World and ICAO staff estimates.|url=http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IS.AIR.DPRT|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170204085353/http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IS.AIR.DPRT|archive-date=2017-02-04}} In the U.S. alone, the passenger miles "computed by summing the products of the aircraft-miles flown on each inter airport segment multiplied by the number of passengers carried on that segment" have reached {{convert|607,772|e6mi}} in 2014 (as compared to highway car traffic with {{convert|4,371,706|e6mi}}).{{cite web|url=https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_40.html|title=U.S. Passenger-Miles|publisher=Bureau of Transportation Statistics|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170204003210/https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_40.html|archive-date=2017-02-04}} The global seasonally adjusted revenue passenger kilometers per month peaked at more than {{convert|550|e9km}} (~6.6 trillion per year, corresponding to roughly 2000 km per passenger) in January 2016, a 7% rise over one year.{{cite web| publisher=IATA| title=Press Release No.: 11 / Strong Passenger Demand Continues into 2016| date=8 March 2016| url=http://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/Pages/2016-03-08-01.aspx| url-status=live| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170204085158/http://www.iata.org/pressroom/pr/Pages/2016-03-08-01.aspx| archive-date=4 February 2017}}{{cite web |url=http://www.iata.org/pressroom/facts_figures/fact_sheets/Documents/fact-sheet-industry-facts.pdf |title=Pressroom |access-date=2017-02-03 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170315202904/http://www.iata.org/pressroom/facts_figures/fact_sheets/Documents/fact-sheet-industry-facts.pdf |archive-date=2017-03-15 }} The passenger numbers are distinctively more volatile than general economic indicators. Global political, economic or health crises have an amplifying effect.{{cite web|url=https://ppiaf.org/documents/2058/download|title=Airport Economics in Latin America and the Caribbean|author=Tomás Serebrisky|publisher=The World Bank|access-date=2022-01-30|archive-date=2022-01-30|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220130150043/https://ppiaf.org/documents/2058/download|url-status=dead}}

{{See also|Passenger load factor}}

• Air travel
• Military aviation
• Private aviation
• CUNY Aviation Institute
• International Civil Aviation Organization
• National Aviation Intelligence Integration Office

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{{Reflist}}

• [http://www.icao.int/ International Civil Aviation Organization] (ICAO) — the U.N. agency responsible for civil aviation

{{Commercial aviation}}

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