Aviation in France The national carrier of France is Air France, a full service global airline which flies to 20 domestic destinations and 150 international destinations in 83 countries (including Overseas departments and territories of France) across all 6 major continents. The history of French aviation began at the beginning of the 20th century. The French had been involved in human flight since 1783, when François Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes flew over Paris in the first human flight in a Hot air balloon. On 7 January 1785 Jean-Pierre Blanchard crossed the English Channel, from Dover to Calais, on board a hydrogen balloon.
Hot air balloon from downtown Mumbai, India, and landed south in Panchale. The previous record of had been set by Per Lindstrand on June 6, 1988, in Plano, Texas. On January 15, 1991, the 'Virgin Pacific Flyer' balloon completed the longest flight in a hot air balloon when Per Lindstrand (born in Sweden, but resident in the UK) and Richard Branson of the UK flew from Japan to Northern Canada. With a volume of 74,000 cubic meters (2.6 million cubic feet), the balloon envelope was the largest ever built for a hot air craft. Designed to fly in the trans-oceanic jet streams, the