Brazilian civil aviation

Commercial aviation has some characteristics that are attributed to its military and state control
origins. Aviation has developed remarkably in the period of the two World Wars of the twentieth
century, in the process of crisis of the western economies, and also due to the saturation of the
technical system. Between the First World War and the collapse of the Wall Street Stock
Exchange, the hitherto implemented technique was unable to respond in either quantity or cost to
growth when production surpassed 32 million tonnes of steel in 1913, to 57 million in 1929
(Gille, 1978). Aviation appears in the scenario of the western economy with the Great World
Wars for the reasons that caused them as well as the challenges posed in those wars. The plane,
already present in World War I, combines two important variables, cost and speed. In 1919 civil
aviation services can be checked on specific sections and small equipment, but still doing 5,150
km. For example, flights run as Paris-London with 11 passengers or Paris-Brussels with five
passengers. The companies are small, such as a German company formed to make Berlin-
Hamburg and Berlin-Leipzig or an English company to cross the English Sea (Gille, 1978).

More than in other preceding periods, technical solutions are sought, associating new techniques
with the possibilities of science. Speed limitation problems and airplane performance are
overcome by applying the turboprop and turbo-reactor, replacing the classic piston engine. The
increase in speed becomes noticeable, increasing the speed of flights from 265 km per hour to
305 km per hour. Four years later this speed is already 448 km per hour. The challenge of the
great distances begins to be broken with the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean in 1927. In 1929
202,500 km by plane already are realized. In 1939 Panam made the first commercial crossing
between Marseille and Washington with a giant seaplane, the Boeing 314 dixie Clipper carrying
22 passengers (Gille, 1978).

The changes also develop as a result of research into new materials since the late 19th century.
New technical solutions and procedures are tested and implemented in aviation. In the two Great
Wars the scientific revolution put into competition two world political systems, the industrial and
the military. The time for the North Atlantic crossing, for example, is reduced from 33 hours to
23 hours with the 44-passenger DC-4 with equipment as early as 1946. In 1960, the Boeing 707
quad-reactor made this crossing in 144 hours with 144 passengers. and so in 1963 nearly three
million passengers make this crossing. The 70's is marked by the height of aviation. This is the
time for the launch of the Boeing 747, multiplying productivity by 16 seats / km per hour,
carrying 357 passengers on one flight, which contributes to carrying more than nine million
passengers in the year. And also the Concorde, which is launched in 1973 to make the Paris-
Washington stretch in three and a half hours.

Air transport is particularly favored for the transport of goods over long distances, diminishing
the advantages of medium distances, accelerating the mass production process. In addition to rail
and maritime alternatives, it now also focuses on air transport, enabling new markets to invade
other continents. To get a sense of the size of this air circulation, it can be seen, for example, that
in the winter of 1948, 150,000 tons of goods were transported from the US to West Berlin. In
just over twenty years, between 1945 and 1967, air transport quadrupled the amount of goods
transported, and between 1950 and 1970 the number of passengers multiplied by 10 and the
number of kilometers multiplied by 15. In 1972, the Boeing 747 already carried 100 tons of
goods between Frankfurt and New York (Gille, 1978).

The growth of civil aviation in the world is presented as part of a process of transformation of the
productive system, dependent on large-scale industrial production, the advance of large industry
in the movement of goods to different markets and production spaces. The increase in speed
made it possible to accelerate the movement of goods and, as a result, making use of these
possibilities and, together with those of the various telecommunication systems, there was also
the breakdown of territorial boundaries.

Changes in this sector are notably linked to strong state intervention. Air transport is, in fact, the
place where state power is exercised. First, because airspace is state controlled. Second, it allows
the unity of the territory to be achieved by reducing the distances between borders. Third,
because it allows the state to link the economic and power centers to other regions. Fourth,
because transportation was created as a public service for the citizen's right to transport, even if
managed as a private business. Civil aviation activity is strongly regulated by the State, both in
the production process and in labor relations, by the structuring of production and the labor
market, from training to professional practice and the way in which these occupations are
structured and controlled. organizations.

However, this privileged place of state air intervention develops a high-cost sector by reaffirming
the justification of the state's monopoly (Barca, 1993). The growth of civil aviation is part of a
process of transformation of the production system, of the advance of large industry in the
movement of goods to different markets and production spaces. Changes in the production
system since the 1980s have also implied a process of deregulation of the sector (Dempsey,
1993). After the glorious thirty postwar years, the relationship between the sector and the state is
profoundly changed. New forms of market are structured as well as new forms of competition,
especially new labor relations. This process of change, however, did not break with the present
contradictions, such as the strategic importance of aviation as the hegemonic presence of the
power of economic centers over peripheral regions. Nor can we deny the importance of the
development of the sector for the application and diffusion of new information technologies
associated with electronic and communication systems and, consequently, of the aeronautical
industry. The major contradiction concerns the high cost of such transportation and the non-
applicability of the economy of scale (Barca, 1993), even if its production begins to develop in
networks among the world's airlines.

The organization of this sector is related to the state control of air transport, especially by the
place where state power is exercised. First, because airspace is state domain. Second, it allows
the unity of the territory to be achieved by reducing the distances between borders. Third,
because it allows the state to link the economic and power centers to other regions. Fourth,
because transportation was created as a public service for the citizen's right to transport, even if
managed as a private business. Civil aviation activity is strongly regulated by the state, both in
the production process and in labor relations, by the structuring of production and the labor
market, from training to professional practice and how these occupations are structured and
controlled. in organizations.