An account of world-wide commercial aviation showing how it operates and is controlled. The aim of the International Civil Aviation Organization is to establish and maintain standards of safety and comfort. Film includes sequences shot in Bolivia, Afghanistan, Beirut, Montreal and Switzerland, along the new routes of the North Pole, at London Airport and in Venezuela. The impact of air travel on primitive peoples, in particular on an Abyssinian peasant who had never seen a railway or a real road.