The Global Airline Industry (Aerospace Series) 2nd Edition

Book Preface

The global airline industry has matured into a vast and complex system of interrelated technical, economic and organizational components, all of which must work in harmony to ensure the safe and reliable operation of air transportation services. Contributing to each of these components are numerous stakeholders with diverse perspectives and interests – industrial, legal, commercial and human entities, including the passengers and freight carried by airlines to every corner of the globe. The introduction to this book puts the importance of the global industry into context: 1,400 commercial airlines operating 25,000 aircraft to over 3,800 airports, operating 36 million flights and carrying 3 billion passengers annually. Not only is this a significant business in its own right, aviation is an important player in world commerce and politics, as well as security and environmental policy.

Despite all this complexity, the global airline industry operates continuously – “24/7” in modern parlance. We have all come to expect nothing less, yet it is difficult for most people to comprehend the dynamics of the technical, commercial, legal, regulatory, industrial and human systems, as well as the competitive and political pressures that affect the world’s airlines. Understanding of even the fundamentals of this industry requires an interdisciplinary approach and a wide range of expertise. In this 2nd Edition of The Global Airline Industry, the contributors are indeed experts in many different facets of global aviation, and they provide an updated discussion that includes basic concepts, advanced research, as well as many recent developments.

The Aerospace Series is relevant to a variety of readers involved in all aspects of this industry including design, manufacture, operations, maintenance and supporting activities, and this is a book that integrates many of these activities into a thorough examination of global aviation. It is a great tribute to the contributors that they have not only tackled a multifarious industrial system of such complexity but that they have presented it in such a clear and concise manner.

Peter Belobaba, Jonathan Cooper and Allan Seabridge