From flying boats to jumbo jets: 100 years of commercial flight FLIERS frustrated with the discomforts of modern air travel might spare a thought this week for what flying was like a century ago when the first scheduled commercial airline in the world launched its inaugural flight from a Florida yacht basin. On January 1, 1914, a wood-and-muslin Benoist XIV flying boat, powered by a noisy, six-cylinder, 75-horsepower engine, took off from St Petersburg, Florida, with its pilot and one passenger sitting on a small wooden bench, exposed to the elements. The rickety plane travelled 29km as the crow flies, landing in the Hillsboro River off Tampa, a 23-minute journey at speeds up to 96km/h an hour. Normally such a trip would take two hours on a steam ship across Tampa Bay.