By John A. Meyers

On a clear cool day in 1926, a nine-year-old boy in short pants watched a Swallow biplane circle and land at his hometown airfield in Boise, Idaho. It was the first plane he had ever seen close up. It was also the start of the first permanent scheduled airline service in the U.S. More than half a century later, TIME'S Jerry Hannifin finally realized his childhood dream by flying a restored Swallow. He has logged 2,550 hours in the air as a pilot, flying planes that ranged from a J-3 Cub to the Air Force's giant B-52G. An unabashed aerophile who has never let his FAA license expire, Hannifin goes by a simple credo: "I fly whenever I get the chance." He drew on his lifetime of enthusiasm--and his 32-year career at TIME as an aerospace expert--to file for our cover story on the Revolution In Air Travel.

When Hannifin landed at TIME in 1946, he recalls, commercial aviation was still the domain of a few strong-willed and innovative men who ran their fledgling airlines with a fierce competitiveness. Among them was C.E. Woolman, who started Delta Air Lines with a pair of Huff-Daland crop-dusting airplanes in Georgia. And Captain Eddie Rickenbacker--Hannifin calls him "great, truly fearless and fascinatingly irascible"--who built Eastern Air Lines by flying DC-3's to remote East Coast outposts along what he called "Tobacco Road" routes. Alexander G. Hardy, former Senior Vice President of National Airlines, once hid overnight at Hannifin's apartment during an industry feud. Perhaps the most farsighted of them all was Juan Trippe, First Chief of Pan Am. Recalls Hannifin: "He kept telling me, 'We can make it easier for people to fly in bigger airplanes.' "

This week's cover story, written by Associate Editor David B. Tinnin and researched by Sue Raffety and Sandye Wilson, shows clearly that the industry has made flying easier--so easy, in fact, that this summer many jets are flying at full capacity and airports are overcrowded. The airlines that Hannifin has covered for so long have grown into vast corporations; the executives he interviews these days are members of a new breed, more sophisticated and less rambunctious than their predecessors, perhaps, but as competitive. For Hannifin, the romance of air travel has not been lost. Says he: "There is still a grand sense of freedom in the air." Must be. TIME's Photographer Dirck Halstead averaged 1,760 air miles a day for eight days to take the color pictures for our story. And, despite the crowds, Halstead still likes flying. Jerry Hannifin understands that.

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