Necessity is the mother of invention, as the saying goes, is what created and propelled the aircraft and flight school industry. The history of flight schools is one that showcases human ingenuity and the need for us to always prove and outdo ourselves. Aviation has come a long way from the Wright brothers first successful flight. Let’s look at how modern flight schools came about to become the behemoth industry it is today.
Before the 1900s
It is difficult to trace the birth of the aviation industry, but we know that there were important milestones that really paved the way for the modern flight schools we see today.
Even before the Wright brothers, there were a lot of theoretical talks by scientists and mathematicians on the possibility of air flight, brilliant people had contributed to the field by theoretical means. Many people thought it to be a near-impossible task to accomplish, as there were just too many gray areas to consider building a machine capable of flight. No one had flown any type of plane before that, so, naturally, there was a lot of skepticism and scientific debate on the right way to go about building a flight-capable machine.
Enter: The Wright brothers. Orville and Wilbur Wright were the first people to successfully test a flight-capable machine on December 17, 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The date was marked as a milestone in both aviation and human history. From that time on, the technology in aviation had started to develop tremendously. It would take 14 more years until the development of the modern aircraft and the flight school industry to really take steam.
World War 1
The first world war started just 14 years after the initial test flight by the Wright brothers. There had been a lot of development in between and a handful of small flight schools around the country had popped up as well, but it was nothing significant. Most people were taught the basics of flight and the ones that came out usually became either instructors themselves or crop dusters. The flight schools were basic in nature and students were taught using the initial aircraft designs of the time. But when the war broke out, there was a striking interest in the use of aircraft for offense and strategy. This interest spiked a demand for pilots, suddenly we needed a fleet of capable pilots who could not only maneuver their aircraft but also take down enemy aircraft.
This shift in focus and purpose for the aircraft started a new wave of flight schools. These flight schools were designed to prepare pilots of top caliber. Soon, the flight school industry started to take shape and with more and more funding, bigger and better flight schools started to appear throughout the country. The increase in flight schools sparked a revolution in the aircraft industry as well as more engineers and scientists were recruited to create the best possible version of the airplane that the technology of the time allowed. Better and more maintained planes started to come out of the aviation industry. Flight schools had started to up the ante by investing in a more diverse fleet of planes with better instructors and a more professional training framework.
The Commercial Airline
The first commercial airline was thought to be the perfect marriage of transportation and technology. Taking place on the 1st of January 1914 for the St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line. It was another milestone in the aviation world which only furthered our need to do better. Soon after, a lot of big airliners started to come about, and demand for commercial pilots started to grow tremendously. This paved way for better curriculum and an interest in flight schools that focused on commercial airline pilots.
Most flight schools like AeroGuard Flight Training Center, have developed pilot training programs that catered to the demand of commercial pilots. This included a heavier fleet, more experienced trainers, and an entirely new set of rules and regulations that were needed to run a multi-crew cabin aircraft. Suddenly, there were airports with scheduled flights, owing to the peoples trust in flying and the general realization of air transport to be a much more convenient form of long-distance transportation. It wasn’t long until the public flocked to airports to try out their first ride on an airplane.
The flight school boom coupled with our insatiable thirst for curiosity and the advent of better technology that enabled heavier aircrafts are the real heroes of this story. All it took was the first successful flight and the rest, as they say, is history.
