Concorde taking off

Perhaps the single most influential event in the history of commercial air travel was the arrival of the Boeing 747, or 'jumbo jet' in 1969. Since then it has flown 1.5 billion people 20 billion miles. Seating up to 450 passengers, and twice as big as any other passenger plane in the skies, it revolutionised mass air transport and made the world a smaller place.

Within a decade, affordable flights became an everyday commodity and airports expanded to meet the demand. Certain terminals around the world were chosen as the central convergence - or hub - of a network of routes. Today, the world's busiest international aviation hub, Heathrow, London, sees a plane take off or land every 90 seconds.

After the jumbo, another great revolution in air travel was the introduction of the world's first supersonic airliner - Concorde. Cruising along at twice the speed of sound, it took less than half the normal flying time of other jets. With this futuristic airliner recently removed from service due to high running costs, some may feel that the story of air travel has now taken a big step backwards.