Transatlantic flight

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Transatlantic flight is any flight of an aircraft, whether fixed-wing aircraft, balloon or other device, which involves crossing the Atlantic Ocean — with a starting point in North America or South America and ending in Europe or Africa, or vice versa.

A view from an aircraft over the Atlantic.
A view from an aircraft over the Atlantic.

[edit] History

Transatlantic flights are sometimes over two hours from land.
Transatlantic flights are sometimes over two hours from land.

The notion of crossing the Atlantic by air has exerted an irresistible romantic and commercial attraction on aviators and airlines ever since the earliest days of flight. The technical obstacles of long flights over the open ocean were and are daunting, and they remained insurmountable for decades. Commercial exploitation of transatlantic flight involved even greater challenges beyond the straightforward technical problems of simply surviving the crossing.

Problems that faced early aviation included the unreliability of early engines, the limited range of contemporary aircraft (which prevented them from flying continuously for the periods of time required to completely cross the Atlantic), the difficulty of navigating over open, featureless expanses of water for distances of thousands of miles without straying off course, the unpredictable and often violent weather for which the North Atlantic in particular is well known, and the problem of finding routes that are of reasonable length, do not include adverse wind conditions, and avoid bad weather. One by one, these problems have been overcome, but it has been a slow process. Today, however, commercial transatlantic flight is routine. Experimental flight (in balloons, small aircraft, etc.) still presents a challenge for the adventurous.

[edit] Commercial transatlantic flight

The North Atlantic presented major challenges for aviators due to unpredictable weather and the huge distances involved coupled with the lack of intermediate stopping points. Initial commercial forays into transatlantic services, therefore, focused more on the South Atlantic, where a number of French, German, and Italian airlines offered seaplane service for mail between South America and West Africa in the 1930s. German airlines, such as Deutsche Luft Hansa, experimented with a number of mail routes over the North Atlantic in the early 1930s, both with seaplanes and with dirigibles, but these were not regularly scheduled services and never led to commercial operations. There were, however, hundreds of commercial transatlantic crossings with passengers made by German airships during the late 1920s and 1930s, including the Graf Zeppelin and Hindenburg.

As technology progressed, Pan American World Airways of the United States, Imperial Airways of Britain, and Aéropostale of France, began to use flying boats to connect the Americas to Europe via Bermuda and the Azores during the 1930s. On 26 March 1939, Pan American made its first trial transatlantic flight from Baltimore, Maryland to Foynes, Ireland using a Boeing 314 (named Yankee Clipper by PanAm) with a scheduled flight time of about 29 hours. After World War II, American and European carriers such as Pan Am, TWA, Trans Canada Airlines (TCA), BOAC, and Air France acquired larger piston aircraft, which allowed service over the North Atlantic with intermediate stops (usually in Gander, Newfoundland and/or Shannon, Ireland). Jet service began in the late 1950s, and supersonic service (Concorde) was offered from 1976 to 2003. Since the loosening of regulations in the 1970s and 1980s, a large number of airlines now compete in the transatlantic air travel market, though restrictions on certain airports still remain (see Bermuda II).

[edit] Navigation

Navigation over the Atlantic imposes special constraints on commercial flights that do not exist for flights over inhabited land. Routes used by aircraft are standardized but change daily in position and altitude in order to compensate for varying weather factors—particularly tailwinds and headwinds, which may be substantial at cruising altitudes and have a strong influence on trip duration and fuel economy. Eastbound flights generally operate during nighttime hours, while westbound flights generally operate during daytime hours, in part because of these weather constraints. Restrictions on how far certain types of aircraft may be from the nearest airport also play a part in determining transatlantic routes; in general, the greater the number of engines an aircraft has, the greater the distance it is allowed to be from the nearest airport (the theory being a single engine failure in a four-engine aircraft is less crippling than a single engine failure in a twin).

Unavoidable gaps in air traffic control and radar coverage over large stretches of the Earth's oceans, as well as an absence of most types of radio navigation aids, impose a requirement for a high level of autonomy in navigation upon transatlantic flights. Aircraft must include highly reliable systems that can determine the aircraft's course and position with great accuracy over long distances. In addition to the traditional magnetic compass (the main instrument used by Lindbergh, but now much less important), Inertial navigation systems, very long distance radio aids such as LORAN, and satellite navigation systems such as GPS all have their places in transatlantic navigation. Land-based systems such as VORs, however, are mostly useless for ocean crossings.

[edit] Early notable transatlantic flights

Alcock and Brown's Vickers Vimy takes off from Newfoundland.
Alcock and Brown's Vickers Vimy takes off from Newfoundland.

[edit] Other early transatlantic flights

Apart from most notable flights described above, many persons attempted to fly across Atlantic, which was quite dangerous in early years of aviation. These include:

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