Air travel is full of ups and downs, even though it has grown almost steadily at 5% per year since the end of the Second World War. It was built by airlines that developed an international system of cooperation between carriers and relentless search for safety, well helped by manufacturers and managing authorities of this activity.

And yet the course counted many deaths and not the least. In the United States alone, since 1960, 65 companies have entered the “Chapter 11” regime, the equivalent of European bankruptcy filing, and 32 of them have had to cease operations. And among these victims are the biggest names in air transport.

PAN AM for starters. It is thanks to this company that air transport has become an international activity and a real travel product, first recognized by customers. This carrier opened the north-south transpacific and trans-American routes before 1940. It created the operational and commercial tools, including the electronic reservation systems that were copiedby all its competitors. It operated the first Boeing 747s, opened its own terminals at many airports. In short, if air transport has reached the level of excellence that we know it, it is largely because PAN AM has cleared and organized the activity. And yet the company created in 1927 finally disappeared on December 4, 1991. It did not resist the arrival of  “low costs” on American territory and the Lockerbie attack completed it. And above all, she finally succumbed to a certain arrogance because the leaders, as well as the employees, simply believed her unwantable.

The same story happened again a few years later for its competitor TWA, which shared international long-haul routes with PAN AM. Led for years by the whimsical yet brilliant Howard Hughes, it had become the emblem of a chic and conquering America. She too was the victim of a terrible accident that blew up flight TW 800 from New York Paris on July 17, 1996. Finally the company had to resolve to merge with American Airlines in 2001 and disappear from the sky.

The same causes producing the same effects the three other American giants rescued from successive mergers and mergers: American Airlines created in 1930, Delta Airlines born in 1924 and United Airlines whose operations began in 1926, are all passed through the claudine forks of “Chapter 11”. It is to be feared that without this device finally very well thought out, they will have suffered the same fate as their unfortunate competitors.

Elsewhere, in the world, the majority of major operators have also been led to bankruptcy or stupidly to their disappearance. This is, for example, the case of Swissair created in 1931 and disappeared on March 31, 2022, Alitalia whose origin dates back to 1946 and the disappearance on October 15, 2021, Japan Airlines which operated since 1951 and whose bankruptcy was registered on January 18, 2010, or Varig, the major Brazilian carrier, died on 09 April 2001 although he existed since 1927.

We could mention many other renowned operators. Even recently SAS yet often cited as an example had to resolve to the American “Chapter 11” on July 05, 2022.  Finally, what remains of the great historical companies? Curiously, the three largest European operators have withstood the vagaries of history. Air France, admittedly very widely supported by successive French governments, finally went through extreme turbulence with, it should be remembered, two highly publicized crashes: the Concorde and the Rio-Paris. British Airways, which was thought to be moribund in the early 2000s, has achieved a spectacular recovery, at the cost of a terrible reduction in its network. Lufthansa, for its part, has not been spared by the difficulties, in particular the terrible crash of the flight of its subsidiary Germanwings in the French Alps.

The will to survive of both has led them to look the new realities in the face and first of all the “low cost” phenomenon that has really swept through Europe. In one way or another, these three major operators ended up adapting by being at the initiative of groups of companies that all kept their image and a certain autonomy unlike what happened in the USA.

We need another editorial to analyze the situation in Asia and Africa… and the recent emergence of Gulf carriers. Let us salute the successes and respect the companies that have disappeared.