Air Transport, The Easy Target.

Decidedly, you have to have a strong backbone to create an airline. The more we advance in technology, the more perfect safety becomes, the more fuel consumption decreases, the more air transport basically becomes a model for the future of the planet and the more it is attacked. And in this group, carriers, those who ultimately take all the risks, are the most impacted by the attacks on this sector of activity.

For decades, civil aviation has been the darling of governments. The latter have largely helped their national companies to develop with all kinds of protection and massive injections of money. They did it because they found it to their advantage. An important company was the image of the country and played a major role in its political influence but also in its economic development. This fruitful collaboration has led to the creation of modern air transport, which has been one of the main drivers of global growth by promoting trade.

And then, in the short time being, let’s say less than ten years, the perception of air transport by the political authorities has changed. It must be said, in their defence, that the sector has not been free of excesses, in particular because it has not managed to integrate the arrival of the “low cost” model in a quiet way. Instead of accepting it as a convenient way to develop a new customer base, traditional carriers have had no other goal than to compete with new entrants when they would have been much better off cooperating with them. This is how the disastrous price war began. The insane call rates have been copied even by traditional airlines and customers have rushed to travel for a yes or no, because that’s how freedom is exercised. This led to the development of “over-tourism”.

And from that moment on, the legitimacy of air transport was called into question. It has become the emblem of the destruction of the planet, when this is totally false. Except that we can still see the effects of a certain overconsumption. From then on, it was easy to point the finger at this growing means of transport, but whose effects could lead to regrettable disorders. The “shame of travelling” began to creep into people’s minds and governments took advantage of this to take administrative limitation measures, and to levy taxes whose destination was not devoted to research to further decarbonize air transport, but to support its competitor, the railway, which was never able to finance itself.

And now a new danger awaits this activity. This involves the use of drones to disrupt the airspace around major airports. Thus, European air transport has become a new target in the war between Russia and Ukraine. It is easy, not very defended, and a single drone can not only force the temporary closure of a major airport, but also disrupt the operation of airlines because it only takes one “hub” to be threatened to disrupt an entire operation. In addition, the media impact is immediately very important.

Basically, air transport will now become the target of all the discontented. Environmentalists have made it their main target, governments have found a mine to balance their budgets, and the military is using it to settle their differences. Instead of tackling the fundamental issues, it becomes more practical and certainly simpler to point the finger at air transport, even if, deep down, the rulers are well aware that this is not the solution. But it is a sector of activity that is both media and popular because a majority of voters are still not users of this mode of transport.

In the midst of this, some companies continue to do well, even if they are also subject to strong geopolitical constraints. Emirates, to name just one, has just achieved a historic result: $3.3 billion in profit in a single quarter. This can bring back a certain optimism in this much-maligned activity and one wonders why.

And optimism will be needed.