Entries by Jean-Louis Baroux

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Not Easy to Govern an Airline

There is a position that all ambitious airline employees dream of, that of Executive Chairman of anairline. And yet, on reflection, is it such an enviable profession? The constraints both internal to thecompany and related to its environment, in the midst of which it must evolve, can make lifeimpossible. Listing them is a real headache, […]

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The Difficult Situation of Northern Carriers

There was a time, not so long ago, when Nordic airlines were the envy of other European operators.It was the time when SAS (Scandinavian Airlines System) could be named the best airline in the worldin the mid-1980s and when Finnair was weaving its network between Europe and Asia by transitingpassengers through Helsinki. It should be […]

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The Future Giants Of Air Transport

We are used to the ever-increasing figures of air transport, wholesale and for the year 2025, 5 billionpassengers, 1,000 billion dollars in turnover, more than 15,000 aircraft in regular operation by 1,200carriers, 800 of which carry 98% of the market. And growth continues at the same rate of 5% peryear, which leads to a doubling […]

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What Is the Purpose of an Airline?

This question leads to an obvious answer: to transport passengers. Of course, this is its primaryvocation and the success of air transport is the most striking demonstration of this. Nearly 5 billionpassengers in 2025 and a demand that continues to grow. Let’s remember that the inhabitants ofmore than 2/3 of the planet still do not […]

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GDS Are Big Profiteers of AI

GDS (Global Distribution Systems) are not new in the world of air transport. Created by the majorairlines between the late 1970s and the early 1980s, following the deregulation of American airtransport decided by President Carter in 1978, they have established themselves as the essential toolof distribution by linking travel agents to carriers’ inventory systems. It […]

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The end of “low-costs”

The title is a bit provocative, but the question deserves to be asked. Of course, “low-cost” carriers arenot going to disappear, but their product and their way of operating are in line with the methods oftraditional airlines and moreover, the latter have also largely evolved their operation towards the“low-cost” model. From then on, and at […]

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How do airlines differ?

Pieter Elbers, CEO of India’s IndiGo, which has placed the largest order for aircraft ever with 1,021planes all at Airbus, pointed out that the only real difference between airlines was the quality of thecrew. Is this really true? Air transport is organised in such a way that all operators have the same opportunities because theyare […]

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Enough is Enough

On July 3 and 4, 2025, a small minority of French air traffic controllers: 272 on Thursday, July 3 and 251 onFriday, July 4, 2025 out of a total of 3,462 air traffic controllers employed by the air navigation service DSNA,which depends on the DGAC, the French Civil Aviation Directorate, went on strike. The result […]

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ICAO: A Supranational Power?

There are powers vested in certain international organizations that are greater than those of sovereign states. This is the case of the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) created in November 1944 by the historic Chicago Convention which laid the foundations of modern commercial aviation. Originally 52 countries were part of this organization, there are now […]

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The difficult relationship between the media and air transport

There is no doubt that air travel is one of the media’s favourite subjects. This activity has becomeaccessible to the general public even if a very small number of the inhabitants of the planet havealready practiced it. And then it is not natural for an earthling to be propelled into the air, at analtitude of […]