Ten things you never knew about... civil aviation

International Civil Aviation Day is on December 7 each year which was the date in 1944 of the signing of the Convention on International Civil Aviation. 1. The world’s civil aviation fleets in 2015 comprised 27,352 aeroplanes. 2. At any moment, somewhere between 500,000 and a million people are flying in aeroplanes. 3. The world’s airlines took 3.5 billion people a total of 4.1 trillion passenger miles in 2015. 4. The first scheduled commercial airline flight was on January 1, 1914 across Florida Bay from St Petersburg to Tampa. 5. In 2015, Heathrow was the world’s sixth busiest airport by number of passengers. It was beaten by Atlanta, Beijing, Dubai, Chicago and Tokyo. 6. The first airline meals cost three shillings on a London-to-Paris flight in October 1919. 7. In 2001, Triumph International launched the Frequent Flyers’ bra as the metal in conventional brassieres had been setting off airport detectors. 8. The world’s smallest commercial runway is on the Caribbean island of Saba. It is only 400 metres long and is too short for jet airliners. 9. A Boeing 747 jumbo jet weighs as much as 67 average African elephants. 10. The word “air-port” dates back to the 1780s when it meant a ventilation porthole in a ship.