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 are unaware that is possible to sail through the element air"). Persecuted by the Inquisition, he was prevented from continuing his research; however, he left designs for a manned air vessel. The French brothers Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne Montgolfier developed a hot air balloon in Annonay, Ardeche, France and demonstrated it publicly on September 19, 1783, making an unmanned flight lasting 10 minutes. After experimenting with unmanned balloons and flights with animals, the first balloon flight with humans aboard, a tethered flight, performed on or around October 15, 1783, by Jean-Francois Pilatre de Rozier who made at least one tethered flight