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Civil Aviation

​Civil aviation is one of two major categories of flying, representing all non-military and non-state aviation, both private and commercial. Most of the countries in the world are members of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and work together to establish common standards and recommended practices for civil aviation through that agency.

Civil aviation includes three major categories:

Commercial air transport, including scheduled and non-scheduled passenger and cargo flights

Aerial work, in which an aircraft is used for specialized services such as agriculture, photography, surveying, search and rescue, etc.

General aviation (GA), including all other civil flights, private or commercial[1]

Although scheduled air transport is the larger operation in terms of passenger numbers, GA is larger in the number of flights (and flight hours, in the U.S.[2]) In the U.S., GA carries 166 million passengers each year,[3] more than any individual airline, though less than all the airlines combined. Since 2004, the US Airlines combined have carried over 600 million passengers each year, and in 2014, they carried a combined 662,819,232 passengers.[4]

Some countries[which?] also make a regulatory distinction[citation needed] based on whether aircraft are flown for hire like:

Commercial aviation includes most or all flying done for hire, particularly scheduled service on airlines; and

Private aviation includes pilots flying for their own purposes (recreation, business meetings, etc.) without receiving any kind of remuneration.

A British Airways Boeing 747-400 departs London Heathrow Airport. This is an example of a commercial aviation service.

All scheduled air transport is commercial, but general aviation can be either commercial or private. Normally, the pilot, aircraft, and operator must all be authorized to perform commercial operations through separate commercial licensing, registration, and operation certificates.

Non-civil aviation is referred to as state aviation. This includes military aviation, state VIP transports, and police/customs aircraft.[5]

​St Neots /sɛnʔ ˈniːəts/[b] is a town and civil parish in the Huntingdonshire District of the county of Cambridgeshire, England, approximately 50 miles (80 km) north of central London. The town straddles the River Great Ouse and is served by a railway station on the East Coast Main Line. It is 14 miles (23 km) west of Cambridge, to which it is linked by the A428 arterial road. It is the largest town in Cambridgeshire and had a population of 30,811 in the 2011 census.[c]

The town is named after the Cornish monk Saint Neot, whose bones were moved to the Priory here from the hamlet of St Neot on Bodmin Moor in around 980 AD. Pilgrimage to the priory church and parish church brought prosperity to the settlement and the town was granted a market charter in 1130. In the 18th and 19th centuries the town enjoyed further prosperity through corn milling, brewing, stagecoach traffic and railways.

After the Second World War the town and its industry were chosen for rapid growth as London councils paid for new housing to be built to rehouse families from London. The first London overspill housing was completed in the early 1960s and new housing has continued at a slightly lower rate such that the population, including the areas transferred from Bedfordshire, is approximately four times that of the 1920s.

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