1．
阅读理解
Today most countries have at least one airline
that flies to foreign countries and one airline that flies inside the country.
Some countries have several of each.
The world's first passenger airline was
called the St. Petersburg Tampa Airboat Line. This St. Petersburg was in
Florida in the USA, and the airline took passengers on a 20-mile flight across
Tampa Bay. It operated for only four months from January 1914.
The first European airline flew every day
from Berlin to Weimar called Deutsche Lutt-Reederei (DLR). It started to
operate on 6 February 1919. At first it carried only mail and newspapers, but
before long it took passengers as well. The planes were open to the air so passengers
had to wear special clothing and shoes to protect them from the wind, rain and
cold.
In March 1919 the first international
airline began to operate. Lignes
Aeriennes Farman flew once a week between Paris and Brussels. The journey took
two hours and 50 minutes. Later that year, an English airline, Air Transport
and Travel, flew every day from London to Paris.
Although the first passenger flights took
place in the USA, the development of air travel in America was strangely slow;
it was not until 1926 that there were any regular passenger services there. It
was not until 1939 that the first service across the North Atlantic began to
operate. This was a service by the Pan American Boeing 314 flying boat, Yankee
Clipper, which took 18 hours and 42 minutes to cover the journey between
Newfoundland in North America and Southampton in England. The journey now takes
about four hours by Boeing 777 and half that by Concorde.
Today for many people air travel is as much
part of their lives as traveling by boat, car or train. Although it has not
seriously affected travel by car or train, it has caused many shipping lines to
stop carrying passengers, as most people now prefer to make long journeys by
air rather than by sea.
