For Whom is Air Transport Organised?

The creators of modern air travel are either already dead or in the latter part of their lives. They
have great difficulty in recognizing it in its present state. Until the end of the 1970s, that is to say
during the first 35 years of this activity born at the end of the Second World War, it was synonymous
with luxury. It must be said that access to it was expensive. In the end, customers paid for a basic
comfort compared to the current state, but they had the impression of disconnecting from the
popular mass condemned to see planes take off from the airport terraces.

This has changed a lot and if the fundamentals: safety, reliability and the search for ever better
technology have remained constants, the same is not true for its consumption. The arrival of “low
costs” has changed everything, first of all the clientele and the way air transport is consumed. This is
not without certain contradictions.

The first is due to ecological constraints. Saving the planet has become a major concern for the
younger generations, who are legitimately worried about its steadily deteriorating condition. But this
same segment of customers rushes to the planes for a yes or no, at least for personal and not
professional considerations, because prices have become so low that you can afford to travel for a
few hours without breaking your budget. However, this acceleration in demand is in itself a producer
of CO² against which the younger generations are trying to fight.

To solve the delicate problem of the real cost of air transport, because it is still necessary to pay for
planes and year in and year out, their cost is €500,000 for the seat on which passengers who pay less
than €100 for a return trip on medium-haul flights sit, customers accept a sharp deterioration in their
comfort. Devices are densified beyond reason and services reduced to their simplest expression. The
U-turn time of the aircraft is so short that the flights at the end of the day are regularly late.
Passengers are forced to wait for long minutes standing on the gangways to speed up boarding. And
finally, the companies have outsourced to their customers a large number of administrative tasks,
such as ticket purchases, the issuance of boarding passes, the check-in of baggage and so on.

Thus modern air transport has moved away from what made its reputation, that is to say a certain
prestige and in fact a certain art of living reserved at the time for a minority of individuals. Each
generation imposes its own way of life on the others. The current working class, let’s say the one
between 20 and 50 years old, has imposed its way of operating on the previous generations, those
who created air transport. Many older customers are not familiar with the digitalization that is
imposed on them, and many older people do not have a computer or a smartphone of the latest
generation. They are also totally helpless in the face of the questions asked, often in an esoteric
language, at least for them.

It is a pity that a segment of the population that has ample economic means cannot find a quality of
products and services that it would be more than willing to pay for, simply because these services do
not exist or no longer exist. However, I note a tendency to find a certain luxury in traditional airlines
which are seeking to stand out from the “low costs” because they are unable to balance their
accounts using the fare range of their competitors. This trend dates back to the end of Covid when
airlines, forced to increase their fares sharply, by around 30%, realized that this did not change the
demand for transport.

There is still some effort to be made to refill the jobs that have been eliminated to make way for
computer tools. Contact with a machine or even a simple telephone will not replace that of a natural
person. The stress of older customers, especially to cross the large airport platforms that are
increasingly gigantic and complex, is becoming an obstacle to travel for people who are largely free
of financial constraints.

Air transport must take care of all its clientele and not some of them, even if they are the most
numerous. After all, a consumer may be entitled to certain things, especially if they are willing to pay
for them.