What Is the Purpose of an Airline?

This question leads to an obvious answer: to transport passengers. Of course, this is its primary
vocation and the success of air transport is the most striking demonstration of this. Nearly 5 billion
passengers in 2025 and a demand that continues to grow. Let’s remember that the inhabitants of
more than 2/3 of the planet still do not have access to this mode of transport and as soon as they
can, they rush to it. He only has to look at the tremendous evolution of air travel in India, where the
company Indigo, for example, has placed an order for 500 aircraft with an average capacity of nearly
200 seats and has taken an equivalent option. So, there is no doubt that airlines have a unique
vocation: to transport passengers or cargo with planes. But that’s not all, and if you take a closer
look, an airline has other vocations.

Low costs

Basically, they are the only carriers whose sole function is to transport passengers. They have
considerably developed the layers of clientele and we owe them a very large part of the
development of tourism but also of over tourism, which is becoming a real concern. This type of
company must be economically profitable because “low costs” have nothing to expect from the
public authorities. There remains the case of Ryanair, which has built a large part of its prosperity by
charging the regions and airports that wanted to host its flights. This strategy worked because in the
end the passengers brought bring a much higher added value than the contributions paid to the
company. This is an example where without necessarily being part of his vocation, a carrier can
revive a region or even develop a country. At least this is what we can see between Europe and some
North African countries.

Legacy airlines

These are the traditional airlines. They created air transport by using the protection of states, which
in turn use them as a means of prestige, but also as a means of diplomatic pressure and even internal
politics. The 197 countries of the world, two of which are only observers at the UN, the Vatican and
Palestine and two are not registered, Taiwan and the Cook Islands, all or almost all have their own
carriers. Even very small states like Monaco have their own helicopter company. The traditional
companies have also evolved a lot and the States have gradually disengaged, at least as far as their
participation in the capital is concerned. Many investment funds have replaced the States without
the latter having given up on keeping control of their national carriers. Many have kept enough
shares to sit on the board of directors and influence certain decisions. Most of them have also largely
supported their national operator financially during the Covid period.

Traditional airlines are the vectors of traffic rights between states and they represent an essential
part of a country’s sovereignty. This is how air carriers become a real tool in the service of countries’
foreign policy, or even a means of camouflaging espionage activities, as we have seen in the past.
They are also the means for some governments to conduct their domestic policies. Ecological
constraints are often put forward to camouflage electoral objectives. It is easier and more effective
to constrain air transport to please the effective environmental lobby rather than to attack other
sectors of activity that are much more a source of pollution, such as textiles for example. But it is
easier for a government to administratively limit air transport, and first of all the national airline,
rather than looking into other sectors of activity that are more difficult to control.
And finally, airlines can become an effective means of pressure in the event of conflict. Preventing
flights between countries is relatively easy, all you have to do is remove traffic rights and not receive
the aircraft of the companies concerned.

Basically, a traditional company has many more functions than transporting passengers. It is the
symbol of a country’s independence. Without its own airline it does not really exist, but the
development of its national carrier as is the case in the Gulf countries immediately gives an influence
that could not be achieved by other means.

This is one of the reasons why air transport still has many years of growth ahead of it.