Four airlines: Air Afrique, Ethiopian Airlines, Union Aéromaritime du Transport (UTA) and Lufthansa will serve as case studies and be analysed from a business and political viewpoint, based on records of government institutions and international organisations, trade journals, interviews with former managers and civil servants, and, where available, corporate archives. Each of these airlines played an important and distinct role in building up the infrastructure for air transport between Europe and Africa after 1950. The West African multinational airline Air Afrique, was formed when 11 francophone states of Africa joined their airspace rights, initially taking over infrastructure and equipment as well as a small fleet from the French. Ethiopian airlines was and still is considered the most successful African airline, set up in the early 1950s with the help of US American managers from the US American Trans World Airlines (TWA), but soon fully Africanised and operating with profit. The French Union de Transports Aériens (UTA) was founded with state funds, as a private company, and one of three major national carriers in the framework of a strict government-controlled air transport sector. The company took over the former colonial network of routes in Africa, it also owned 33 % of the shares in Air Afrique. After 1945, the German flag carrier Luftag, to be renamed Lufthansa in 1954, faced financial difficulties and restrictions to aerial sovereignty, but due to the importance of Frankfurt in international air travel and the economic growth occurring from the mid- 1950s on, the state-owned airline expanded operations throughout the 1960s and 1970s and became an important provider of European-African transport. My key hypothesis is that efforts to produce a distinct Eurafrican airspace between African and European political and economic actors were supposed to foster European integration and to mitigate the impact of US power and Cold War dynamics on European and African states and economies. Air transport is a key element to both the theoretical and practical dimensions of the unfolding of high modernity from the 1960s, which was characterised by the increasing international connectivity and dependency of markets, production, and consumption – and an increasing need for global mobility. By using airlines as a lens, we can understand how economic and political relations were intertwined and resolved on a day-to-day basis of business operations.