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WHY?
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About 200 major airlines are engaged in worldwide intercity and
intercontinental passenger and cargo operations throughout the world.
These airlines carry more than 800 million passengers every year. To
get an idea of the volume of traffic this represents - think about one
busy U.S. airport - Chicago International Airport at O'Hare field. This
one airport has over half a million take-offs and landings every year.
This represents an average of more than one a minute, twenty four hours a
day, with serviced passengers numbering over 60 million per year.
Furthermore, a single plane (The Boeing 747 jumbo jet) has carried as
many as 610 passengers on a single flight. A Pan-Am Boeing 747 has also
flown non-stop between San Francisco and Sydney Australia in under 14
hours on a scheduled weekly flight. Keep in mind this distance is nearly
a third of the way around the world. Figures like this give a good idea
of how far commercial airlines have come since the early days of Orville
and Wilbur Wright. There is little doubt that commercial aviation is
here to stay. Whether it be passengers, cargo or both commercial
airplanes will undoubtedly play an important role throughout the world
for many, many years to come.
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ASSESSMENT: Can the student communicate
what they observed?
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