From its invention through the space race, aviation continually invokes speed, progress and futurity. Yet American air travel has been shaped by longstanding patterns of government-fostered markets in public goods and competition among corporations and cities for consumers. Unlike other nations, the US government never established or controlled its own flagship carrier. Instead, Pan Am, TWA, American, Delta, Eastern, US Air, United, Northwest and others emerged through private entrepreneurship. Yet, as in mass media, governments have regulated safety, pricing, routing and traffic control while providing vital infrastructures. Moreover, military involvement in developing planes and technology (and training pilots) has underpinned constantly changing operations. Yet, while airlines have become mass transportation, with 500 million passengers annually, they also face complaints about responsiveness and complexity erupting into a congressional Passenger’s Bill of Rights in 1999.

America’s first commercial flight connected St. Petersburg and Tampa in 1914. For the next decade, emergent airlines competed with minimal regulation. In 1927 the post office shifted airmail from military aircraft, systematizing routes and sustaining passenger flights (6,000 passengers flew in 1926). In 1934, however, the postmaster general and major domestic carriers American, Eastern, TWA and United faced collusion charges (Pan Am, meanwhile, was spreading American air power to Latin America and China). In 1938 the Civil Aeronautics Act established close regulation of airlines (on the earlier model of trains). Prices, routes and competition became tightly controlled; this system also prevented losses and fostered development instead of cost control.

Airline usage grew from 3 million passengers annually in 1940 to 19 million in 1950 and 58 million by 1960. Postwar four-engine aircraft and jets (1959) reduced flight time and increased seating, while other technologies improved safety. Yet, jumbo jets proved devastating expenses, outstripping demand and provoking a 1970s crisis despite 170 million passengers.

Deregulation in 1978 made the market cutthroat, swamping companies like Pan Am and Eastern despite growth on domestic and international routes. It also permitted new upstart companies—People’s Express (later incorporated into Continental), Air West, Southwest, etc.—as nearly 300 million passengers flew annually by 1980. Discount fares broadened clientele but demanded cost-cutting that favored hub-and-spoke models, based around symbiosis of airlines and particular airports, covering more routes through interconnecting flights, but creating the sort of chain reaction delays which today still plague modern travelers.

Mass marketing has created cultural meanings of air travel as well. Early airline travel, domestic and international, was elegant, elite and, at times, dangerous. Even after the Second World War, the model traveler was a white male businessperson, served by young attractive female stewardesses, while a white male pilot flew—these themes were stressed in infamous, sexually slanted advertising campaigns. Discount fares, the corollary decline of competing systems (trains and buses) and family travel have made air travel more heterogeneous, although some remain excluded. Class differences can still be bought and marked both in general service and in access to charter or private planes.

Brand loyalty in such a large, diverse market is sought through frequent-flyer mile programs, executive clubs and business privileges and upgrades, as well as special relations like Delta’s links with Disneyworld.

In the early twenty-first century, airline connection prices, specials and reservations often seem a daunting morass: fares change and compete while passengers complain that food and service have deteriorated. The deregulated “democratic” market of American airlines makes travel a complex, sometimes frustrating bazaar as it connects and divides the nation and the world.