Aviation in the United States
As of 2020[update], there are 19,919 airports in the United States, of which 5,217 are designated as "public use", including for general aviation and other activities.
From the start of the Great Recession to the early 2010s, air traffic in the U.S. declined and the U.S. government reported 1.2 million fewer scheduled domestic flights in 2013 than in 2007.
[9] On January 1, 1914, pioneering aviator Tony Jannus captained the inaugural flight of the St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line, the world's first commercial passenger airline.
This was largely due to the fact that the U.S. entered the war much later, when most of the European countries were already pressured to advance their aircraft technologies to outcompete one another.
The Europeans had already developed standardized mass production of aircraft, while the U.S. was forced to expand to meet their wartime necessities.
Aircraft production made up most of the U.S.' manufacturing output during the World War II era from 1940 to 1945, contributing to the surge in GDP growth.
[13] The expansion of the airline industry in response to wartime needs also led to higher demand for labor.
[12] Economist Alfred Kahn became the chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board in the mid-1970s, which eventually led to Congress passing the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978.
This allowed for free market competition in the airline industry, to meet the pressure of the decreasing world price of air travel.
The airline industry lost more than $330 million each day within the first week of the attack, totaling losses between $1 and $2 billion.
[23] A person must also go through a pat-down procedure or a body scan before boarding a flight to ensure that they have no prohibited items.
Items that are prohibited on airplanes include firearms, tools, or other objects that can be used as weapons, explosive or flammable materials, and other dangerous or debilitating chemicals or substances.
The Transportation Security Administration provides security at airports and the federal government provides billions of dollars annually to maintain air transport facilities and manage the country's air traffic control system.
Examples of airline hubs include United Airlines at Houston, Newark, Chicago-O'Hare, Denver, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington-Dulles; Delta Air Lines at Atlanta, Boston, New York-JFK, New York-LaGuardia, Salt Lake City, Detroit, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Seattle; and American Airlines at Charlotte, Chicago-O'Hare, Dallas/Fort Worth, Los Angeles, Miami, New York-JFK, New York-LaGuardia, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Washington-Reagan.
Postal Service also moves much of its letters and time sensitive parcels via air, but on regularly scheduled passenger flights.
[30] Overall, passengers were delayed 320 million hours in 2007 with an estimated deadweight economic loss of up to $41 billion.
[29] One-third of aircraft in the national airspace system move through the New York area at some point during a typical day.
Longer-term solutions include increasing capacity by building more runways, and implementing the Next Generation Air Transportation System which would allow more direct flight paths.
The California High-Speed Rail project has been justified among other things as a ways to decrease congestion and thereby delays on the busy San Francisco Bay Area - Metro Los Angeles air corridor.
