The machine’s fuselage was a truss made of ash braced with steel wires; the wing frame was also wooden and covered with fabric. The main undercarriage had two large bicycle wheels, supplemented by a smaller tail wheel mounted under the rear third of the fuselage.

In 1908, Louis Blériot designed his most successful model, the Blériot XI, as a monoplane. Prior to this, the ambitious French aviation pioneer had invested almost a whole decade of his entire fortune in the development of an operational aircraft.

Before the historic Channel flight, Blériot had already broken various long-distance records with this aircraft.

The flight across the English Channel triggered a considerable demand for the XI; Blériot was able to sell around 800 units in 1913 alone out of a total production of French aircraft of around 1,300. To meet the demand, he also had the aircraft produced by subcontractors.

From the XI, Blériot developed a two-seater model with larger dimensions and a considerably more powerful engine, called the XI-2. Of the Bleriot XI-2, 104 aircraft were produced under licence in the UK and 70 in Italy. With the Bleriot XI-2, small bombs and aerial arrows were dropped by hand on ground targets for the first time at the beginning of the First World War.