Pieter Elbers, CEO of India’s IndiGo, which has placed the largest order for aircraft ever with 1,021
planes all at Airbus, pointed out that the only real difference between airlines was the quality of the
crew. Is this really true?

Air transport is organised in such a way that all operators have the same opportunities because they
are ultimately dependent on the same rules, regardless of their country of origin. This is the only way
to be able to exchange passengers and goods from one country to another and this is what has
greatly contributed to the rapid development of this activity.
Looking at the details a little, we can see that the carriers have, in total, few possibilities to express
their originality. They use the same aircraft because, whether they are produced by Airbus or Boeing,
their performance is more or less identical: the same speed, the same ranges, the same type of
comfort, the same safety qualities. In addition, they fly to the same major airports, they use the same
distribution techniques: GDSs and they finance their fleets using the same methods: partly by
purchasing and partly by leasing from the major leasing companies.

In short, the fundamentals of air transport are available to all airlines, but the customization
capabilities between operators remain infinite. Just like with 7 notes of music, you can compose an
infinite number of works, from the most mediocre to the absolute masterpieces.
Of course, the first differentiation comes from the market in which the company operates. In this
sense, the major American carriers hold a privileged position. But what can be said about an airline
like Turkish Airlines, which for a long time was almost non-existent in the world concert and has
become almost unavoidable between the European market and Asian and even African destinations?
How can we explain the eminent position held by Gulf carriers when they do not have a natural
market?

In fact, with the same tools and facilities, airlines can still customize their offering significantly.
First of all, by the cabin fittings. Depending on whether you want to position yourself in the “low cost”
or the high-end, the choice of cabin composition is essential and manufacturers have understood this
well because they deliver aircraft that comply with the specifications of the airlines who can decide
on the entire range of interior equipment from the number, layout and comfort of the seats but also
the galleys and leisure equipment. To this personalisation, we must of course add the quality of the
services served on board, which can make a big difference, especially for long-haul flights. We now
see more and more frequent flights of more than 15 hours.

And then there are an infinite number of factors linked to the great complexity of air transport. The
regularity of operations and their ability to respect their schedules remain particularly important for
customers’ choice, especially when journeys are made with connections at very large airports.
And how can we miss the rates that remain such a determining factor for the choice of many
customers. Curiously, however, these vary from day to day or even hour to the next according to the
fluctuations imposed by the “yield managers”.

Let’s take for example a transatlantic journey that will vary from 7 to 11 hours of flight. Carriers are
violently competing in this economically profitable market. Several dozen carriers share this cake
with roughly the same number of seats offered by operators on each side of the Atlantic. The aircraft
are identical, the airports are common to all, the schedules are very comparable and the fares are
subject to the “yield managers” who use the same IT tools. And yet the flight experience is very
different depending on whether you use an American or European carrier and even with strong
differentiations if only between European airlines. Each of the operators strives to respond first to
the wishes of its main market and the expectations are not the same on both sides of the ocean.
Companies are making great efforts to personalize their product and moreover they are essentially
advertising their personalization, especially since the end of Covid which marked the end of the race
for the lowest prices. So how can we explain this unfortunate practice of “code share” which consists
of putting flight numbers of a European company on a route operated by an American carrier and
vice versa? How can a commercial approach based on the personalization of one airline be justified if
it ends with a flight operated by another that also differentiates itself in a different way? I admit
that I have a lot of difficulty, not only to understand this practice, but to accept it as a customer.
It seems that this is a factor of profitability. Why not, but then you might as well sell the carrier’s
flights directly without camouflaging the reality. The “Interline” agreements between carriers that
allow these exchanges between companies have existed since 1948 and they work very well.

On July 3 and 4, 2025, a small minority of French air traffic controllers: 272 on Thursday, July 3 and 251 on
Friday, 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 was devastating:
in France alone, 933 flights were cancelled on Thursday and 1,125 on Friday, i.e. between 25% of traffic on the
Paris platforms and 50% in southern airports such as Nice, for example. The icing on the cake is that all business
aviation flights have been cancelled. If we take an average of 150 passengers per flight, the 2,058 cancellations
impacted just over 300,000 passengers, not counting delays and customers of private flights. And not to
mention the 1,500 or so European flights forced to be cancelled because it was impossible to fly over French
territory, through which a large proportion of flights from the continent transit.

So much for the quantified damage, but it does not reflect the stress of passengers forced to stay on the
ground or that of airline and airport staff who have had to endure the understandable bad mood of their
customers without being able to take any action to resolve their situation. Of course, the date was well chosen,
it was the date when families can finally meet again after a year of separation.

The most beautiful thing is the reason for this work stoppage. For the past 2 years, controllers have had to
comply with a time clock so that their employer can ensure their presence, since the staff is also sized to move
air traffic safely. Except that until now, no one checked who was the wearer of the badges inserted in the time
clocks, which allowed all accommodations between employees who clocked in on behalf of absentees who were in charge of revenge. To mitigate what is nothing more or less than a form of fraud, the DGAC, i.e. their employer, has decided to introduce facial recognition linked to the wearer of the badge inserted in the time clock. Horror among the controllers who will no longer be able to take hours or even days of absence when they have decided themselves on the number of staff necessary to route the planned traffic. The best part of the story is that the motive of the strikers is precisely to demand additional staff.

Basically, we can’t blame employees for always wanting more, after all they have very short working weeks and
even if their profession requires particularly sustained attention and unfailing professionalism, they are not
alone in the control room and there are several of them on the same workstation in the event of an expected
overload of work. They could just as easily demand large salary increases, even if they are part of the
proportion of the highest paid civil servants, with an average salary of €5,000 net per month, which
corresponds to an average gross salary of €6,250.

In this lamentable case, what is most shocking is the laxity of the authorities. The latter are perfectly aware of
the practices that take place in the control centres and they have been turning a blind eye for years. In
addition, they are unable to organize a continuity of service with only 272 strikers present in two minority
unions out of a total of 3,462 air traffic controllers, i.e. 7.85% of the workforce. I don’t know of any company manager who puts his activity on hold for 7.85% of strikers. How can we accept this lack of authority and
management? How do those in charge accept to put 300,000 people in distress so as not to be able to
reorganize their workforce?

I am told that the controllers are untouchable and that the last time civilian control was handed over to the
military was in 1973, which resulted in a mid-air collision over Nantes. Yes, but that was 52 years ago, more
than half a century ago. Since then, technology has evolved significantly. Are we sure, for example, that foreign
German, Swiss, British or other control centres would not be able to regulate traffic to compensate for the
shortcomings of French centres? For years, Europeans have been working on a European management of air
traffic control. That would be welcome. At the time, the American controllers decided on a massive work
stoppage, but they came up against the will of President Ronald Reagan who proceeded to dismiss all the
strikers, i.e. 2/3 of the workforce. Of course, this caused a monster mess in the sky for at least 3 months, but
since 1981 and the 11,000 layoffs we have not heard of an untimely work stoppage in the USA.
The Minister of Transport, Mr Philippe Tabarot, cannot be satisfied with condemning the attitude of the
strikers in the media. Should the law be changed to stop these acts? Why not, in any case enough is enough
and let the leaders of our country take their responsibilities.

There is no doubt that air travel is one of the media’s favourite subjects. This activity has become
accessible to the general public even if a very small number of the inhabitants of the planet have
already practiced it. And then it is not natural for an earthling to be propelled into the air, at an
altitude of 10,000 meters to fly at 900 km/h in order to arrive at a destination several thousand
kilometers away in countries that sometimes speak a foreign language. In short, taking a flight is still
very anxiety-provoking and it is not the crossing of airports that will ease the apprehension of taking
the plane. At least 50% of passengers are still afraid in this mode of transport. All this probably
explains why the media are so interested in this sector of activity. Let’s add that air transport makes
very beautiful images that televisions and magazines are fond of.

And yet it cannot be said that the media treat air transport in a completely neutral way, especially
since the generalization of social networks. Not a day goes by without a blurb mentioning an incident
that occurred on board an aircraft. One flight was diverted because a passenger felt unwell, or
because an altercation, even a benign one, occurred on board. And the treatment is always dramatic.
The XY Airlines flight was forced to turn back for such an incident. Of course, this is news, but is it
normal to dramatize what is most often only a usual procedure intended to ensure the safety of
passengers?

Basically, customers are now the first providers of news and even images, which are very practical for
filling programs or publications when the activity is not urgent. And innocuous incidents are thus
going around the world, pushed by social networks without all the information having been
prioritized.

Of course, airlines are not free of defects and these must be brought to the attention of consumers,
but sometimes they deserve a technical explanation which is not always provided because it is not
very accessible to the general public. Take the example of plane delays. A certain number of them
are due to technical constraints attributable to the company, others come from a malfunction that
prevents the aircraft from taking off and this is very fortunate, and still others come from air traffic
control, which is divided into several areas, each of which can be a cause of delay. I am thinking in
particular of the repeated strikes affecting European and particularly French air traffic control, which
are a source of delays that are ultimately blamed on the carriers by passengers who are legitimately
irritated by these setbacks.

Next to that, the enormous work done by this sector of activity to achieve excellence is often
overlooked. All it takes is for individuals in need of media coverage to sabotage an aircraft by
painting it green for it to make the front page of the media while the huge investments made for the
decarbonization of air transport are ignored. However, it should be recognized that those in charge
of air transport do not always take the necessary steps to publicize their efforts and that the various
components of the sector spend more time complaining about each other rather than valuing this
difficult activity together.

Basically, the relationship between the media and air transport is “I love you, I don’t love you either”.
There is both a fascination for this activity, which is widely reported in the newspapers, and a
reluctance on the part of operators to disseminate information that is often very explanatory and
which would make air transport even more accepted by the population. Let’s just take the example
of noise. The media regularly relay the complaints of airport residents about the movements of
aircraft forced to fly over them, without it being mentioned that these same residents take full
advantage of the economic activity generated by the airport platforms, which explains why they have
settled nearby, and why we never see any mention that the noise of the aircraft decreases from year
to year under the effect of the very expensive searches paid for by the various operators. An aircraft
of the latest generation of medium-haul aircraft, the most common category, makes 5 times less
noise than an aircraft of the same capacity from the 1990s.

It is not a question here of passing judgment on the merits of the treatment of aerial information,
but just of emphasizing certain misunderstandings between the air sector and the media universe. A
little effort on either side would not hurt.

From the beginning, air transport was designed to be used in the same way in all countries of the
world with the same constraints but also the same possibilities for all. As early as the Chicago
Conference in December 1944, which created the foundations on which air transport was built, and
then with the creation of IATA in April 1945 in Havana, it was clear that this mode of transport should
be accessible to all peoples. This is how, unlike many in the fields of transport: trains, roads but also
hotels, the operating airlines can cooperate with each other at leisure using the same tools and the
same procedures. This is a considerable advantage that is ultimately relatively unexploited.

Of the 1200 or so scheduled airlines, only a few hundred of them use the facilities that they could
greatly benefit from. This of course covers all operational aspects, for example a spare part labelled
AOG (Aircraft On the Ground) in plain English a breakdown for a grounded aircraft, will have absolute
priority on all cargo holds. That is one of the aspects, but the facilities are also exercised in the
distribution of air transport. However, these are very often little known to the small or medium-sized
companies that make up the vast majority of the players, even if they represent only a little more
than 25% of the 1,000 billion in turnover that will most likely be reached this year.

In fact, the large carriers, which have a large infrastructure and specialized services in all areas, are
the only ones to use all the facilities at their disposal, and even then most do not pay any attention to
small markets. But small companies also have the same facilities and they do not use them because
the managers do not have the teams with in-depth knowledge of their usefulness and access. It is
striking to see the energy spent on creating ancillary products such as payment for checked or cabin
baggage, privileged access to certain check-in counters, the use of video games on board, not to
mention the payment of meals or drinks and so on. All this has a cost and even if the revenues end
up becoming significant, the related expenses are not negligible.

Many managers entrust the distribution of their product to the Internet channel alone. I remember
meeting a Swede in the admittedly distant past, the founder of his airline and whose headquarters
were based in Gothenburg. Its product consisted of operating twice a day flights to London, Paris,
Milan and Nice with MD 83s, comfortable 180-seat jets. I asked him how he planned to distribute his
product? “Only through the Internet through my website,” he replied. “Very well,” I pointed out, “but
then you will have to spend considerable amounts of money to inform your potential customers. You
will operate 8 daily frequencies from Gothenburg which has around 500,000 inhabitants, but you will
have to reach the 12 million or so in the London metropolis, the 11 million Parisians who live in Paris
and its surroundings, the 4 million in the Nice area and the 6 million Milanese while in each of these
cities you only operate 2 daily frequencies. It’s going to cost you a fortune. Why don’t you use the
tour of travel agents, whom you will have to pay, but only when they have sold seats?”. This man
took me for a dangerous nerd… But he filed for bankruptcy after 6 months.

Why this anecdote? Simply to emphasize the many facilities available to companies, starting with the
GDSs which are linked to all travel agencies, the IATA BSP (Billing and Settlement Plan) which allows
the issuance of tickets and the repatriation of funds and the “interline” agreements with one of the
two companies specializing in global distribution: Germany’s Hahn Air and France’s APG. However,
all these tools can be used at variable costs with the exception of a few costs for entry into the BSPs,
i.e. the expenses are only payable once the revenues have been received. Why then are they not
used? Most of the time due to a lack of knowledge and it’s a shame. This does not in any way prevent
us from using the tremendous possibilities offered by the Internet.

Everything is designed so that every airline, no matter how small, can access all the world’s markets.
The AFRAA (African Airlines Association) has understood this well because it is in the process of
launching information on the subject to its African constituents. Its example could be usefully copied
by other associations of small and medium-sized airlines for which IATA is too big an organization.