The Airline Industry's Top Five

The number of airlines has declined since the 1980s. Pan Am and TWA and myriad other high profile airlines are no more. But these are the top five airlines as of 2011. Four of the five are based in the United States.

Delta

Delta was formed in 1925 as Huff Daland Dusters, and its planes were the world’s first crop dusters. The airline began carrying passengers in 1929 between Birmingham, Alabama and Dallas, Texas, before the route was extended into Atlanta, Georgia.

Delta merged with Chicago and Southern Airlines in May of 1953 and in 1960 was the first airline to operate the Convair 880. Delta began flying DC-9 service in 1965 and bought Northeast Airlines in 1972.

When Delta bought Northwest Airlines in 2008, it became the largest airline in the world. Atlanta remains Delta’s main base of operations. As of 2010 Delta airlines carried 162,614,714 passengers.

United Airlines

United Airlines was originally Varney Air Lines. Varney was an airmail service which operated between Paso, Washington and Elko, Nevada. United began operating the DC-8 airplane in September of 1959 and in 1961 took over Capital Airlines, thus increasing its route by 7,200 miles.

In 1985, United Airlines took over Pan Am’s Pacific Division, and then, in a somewhat controversial move, took over Continental Airlines.

United's major hub is Chicago and there are other hubs in Washington, D.C., Denver, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Tokyo. As of 2010 United Airlines carried 145,550,000 passengers.

Southwest Airlines

Southwest was formed on March 15, 1967 as Air Southwest. Its goal was to provided low fare intra-state service in Texas. It became Southwest Airlines in March, 1971 and in June of that year began flying between Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio with three Boeing 737-2H4 jets.

Over the course of its life, Southwest has acquired Muse Air/TranStar Airlines, Morris Air, ATA and AirTrain Airways. Despite its humble beginnings, Southwest is the largest airline that operates entirely inside the United States. As of 2010 Southwest airlines carried 130,948,747 passengers.

American Airlines

American Airlines was founded in May 1934, and for the early years of its life was largely dependent on carrying air mail. It's known for its sponsorship of the designs of new airplanes, including the Convair 240 and 990, the Douglas DC-7 and DC-10 and the Lockheed Electra.

From 1945, American had a transatlantic division that was sold to Pan Am in 1950, and began non-stop transcontinental service between New York and Los Angeles in 1953. American began using the 707 on the same route in January of 1959. As of 2010 American airlines carried 105,163,576 passengers.

Lufthansa

Lufthansa, based in Germany, was formed in 1953 as Luftag, to replace the pre-war Deutsche Luft Hansa. Operations began on August, 1955 with service between Hamburg, Dusseldorf, Køln/Bonn, Frankfurt and Munich.

Service to London, Paris and Madrid began shortly after and soon Lufthansa was servicing most of Europe. Service between Frankfurt and New York began in March 1960 and the route extended to San Francisco later in the year. Now Lufthansa services 78 countries. As of 2010, the airline carried 90,173,000 passengers.

About the Author:

This is a guest post written by Joshua Shimon. Joshua writes many articles on the insurance and travel industries. One advice he gives to his readers is to do an online comparison on Kanetix.ca to see which insurance providers offer the cheapest car insurance quote.