Flying through history

I'm not used to being a part of aviation history -- at least not personally, strapped into the seat of a first flight. But that's a pretty normal thing for Alcoa. The history of modern aviation is pretty much the history of aluminum. And the history of aluminum, well, that's the history of Alcoa.
Take the Wright Brothers. We tell this story so often that it sounds like a legend, but it's true. Though the plane was canvas and wood, the engine was made of metal. And the only metal that could get it off the ground was aluminum, supplied by one of our customers in Ohio. Aluminum was less than ten years old when that happened. It's just a little over a hundred years between that historic event and this one.