Air Transport Industry is one of the best prototypes of the future world where all human activities will be integrated including administrations, companies and contractors. In that respect Air Transport Industry gives an idea of the world for which PageBox has been designed.
Why Air transport is special
To provide its service Air Transport Industry must combine the effort of:
* people who sell the service, for instance Travel Agents;
* people who operate aircrafts, airlines;
* people who operate airports;
* traffic controllers;
* customs;
* police
Because this service is provided across countries, it also requires the cooperation of governments. Aircrafts are one of the most blatant applications of military research to civil needs. A company that knows how to make civil aircrafts also knows how to make military aircrafts. A civil aircraft can be used to carry troops. A pilot can pilot a military aircraft. For these reasons Air Transport activities have been subsidized, protected and heavily regulated.
Aircrafts are one century old. In the first half century progress has been extremely fast with frequent breakthroughs. In the second half century progress has been much smaller. Aircraft speed did not increase; the most significant changes, wide body and turbo fans took place at the same time as the legacy organization described below. On the other hand this is only then that Air Transport changed people life.
Like computers and Internet now, aircrafts used to incarnate modernity and to trigger the same kind of passion. Air Transport did not have to be profitable. Air Transport early became a global industry requiring the cooperation of independent organizations, private companies of different size and civil servants. These organizations communicated in a B2B model well before the 2000’. Another aspect is the weight of the legacy. With so many involved countries with so different resources, interests and timetables the big bang is never an option. The Air transport system must remain compatible with 20-years old equipments. As a consequence the Air Transport system is increasingly complex and maybe the main contribution of the computers has been to enable this growing complexity.
An optimal Air Transport system must combine conflicting interests like safety, low fares and noise acceptable for Airport neighbours. The involved organizations are different lifecycles. You can create a Travel Agency in a couple of days and an Airline in a couple of months but you must plan a new Airport twenty years in advance. Such a system needs regulations and the problem is to identify which regulations are needed and which regulations actually protect special interests.