THE FOUR AIRLINES THAT CREATED AIR TRANSPORT

Tremendous success. Even if it is currently criticized, especially in some rich countries that think they can do without it, air transport has reached maturity. 4.5 billion passengers every year, around $900 billion in revenue, 14,000 aircraft in flight every day, these are figures that are beyond imagination.

You have to divide them to get closer to reality: this represents more than 12 million passengers every day, or nearly 515,000 every hour. That's the equivalent of a large urban area. And all this with an accident rate that is close to zero, i.e. excellence.

To achieve this result, which is widely acclaimed by the whole world, requires an incredible combination of skills. Each successful flight, i.e. who leaves and arrives on time, is a real miracle as the exercise of transporting hundreds of passengers over thousands of kilometres at an altitude of 10,000 metres and 900 kilometres per hour requires unfailing professionalism on the part of all the players, and there are many.

First of all, the manufacturers. The latter produce the transport capacity and a large part of the safety. They are the ones on which a comfort that is constantly improving to the point that one wonders what remains to be invented. They are mainly responsible for limiting CO2 emissions to below 3% of the global total despite a steady growth of around 5% per year, which leads to a doubling of traffic every 12 to 15 years. The new aircraft are safer, more fuel-efficient, more comfortable and cheaper to operate. Who can top that? And yet, aircraft manufacturers alone are not enough to create air travel.

Of course, airports are needed, and as traffic increases, there is a need for modern and efficient facilities. Europe is in a difficult situation. Space is limited and airports are old-fashioned. They are very difficult to renovate because you can't raze them to create new ones, with the very notable exception of Istanbul. And yet they will have to find ways to make growing traffic more fluid, probably by making massive use of Artificial Intelligence. The rest of the world continues to invest heavily in new infrastructure that is as important as it is beautiful to look at and convenient to use.

The investments are colossal, commensurate with the ambitions of governments. And yet, the addition of aircraft and airports is still not enough to keep air transport running. No flight is possible without the multitude of service companies: airport assistants who load and unload the aircraft, park them and operate the gangways, cleaning companies, refuellers to fill the tanks, store the fuels and transport them to the aircraft, control agents at screening inspection posts, catering companies, but also the police and border control forces, car rental companies, hoteliers, vendors in shopping malls who occupy a prominent place in airport terminals, meteorologists and I am sure I am forgetting some.

And then there is no air transport without air traffic controllers, the importance of which is easily perceived every time they go on strike. I would also like to point out that this is a European phenomenon to a large extent. This is a very broad description of the complexity of air transport.

And yet there is a lack of a main player, the one who coordinates all the professions we have mentioned: I am talking about the airline. All this effervescence is at the service of the airlines whose mission is to create and represent air transport. 1200 scheduled air carriers of extremely different sizes carry the 12 million daily passengers.

Four of them created modern air travel. I propose to devote a column to each of them. They deserve it. Readers will discover my selection throughout the columns and everyone can make their own selection.

For me, it will be a way to pay tribute to those who created the standards that were eventually copied by all operators.

We thank them for that.