The history of air transport until reaching the current international freight transport system began in 1782, when brothers Jacques and Joseph Montgolfier invented the first hot air balloon.
The first plane in the world was the work of other brothers, the Wright, already in the twentieth century. For a couple of decades, the increasingly perfect balloons and zeppelins competed on equal terms with the planes. The accident of the Hindenburg in 1937 marked the decline of this means of transport, when in full rearmament of the European powers, prior to World War II, the aircraft improved their autonomy, their operability and their carrying capacity.
After World War II, there were already jet-fired planes capable of acquiring a speed of more than 500 kilometers per hour. In between, small milestones had been achieved in the evolution of air transport: in 1916 a commercial plane traveled more than 2,000 kilometers above the Andes mountain range in South America. Three years later, a plane managed to travel the distance between London and Paris, and in that same year 1919 the first transcontinental flight was achieved, between Canada and Ireland.
International freight transport today
In the 21st century, all countries in the world have airports and are connected by routes of all kinds of distance and cost. Passengers, with the tourism boom, use the plane in their holiday periods to enjoy days off in other countries and merchandise travels further and further by air.
While the ship is suitable for the transport of cheap and heavy goods, the aircraft has become the preferred means of transport for sending high-cost or urgently received products.
