In your Comment (Flight International 23-29 April) you quoted Pierre Jeanniot, the director general of the International Air Transport Association as saying that air transport needs to become a normal industry. These are exactly the words we expect from the representative of the commercial side of the air transport industry.
It is a great idea, but the reality is that the airline business is not, and probably never will be, a normal industry. The international air transport network is a system fraught with significant risk. In the final analysis, the success of air travel depends on the skill and reaction time of one human being - the pilot.
The vehicle, once set in motion and past V1, cannot stop safely until it is landed on a runway. No other industry must surmount such technical and human challenges - and the airline business therefore deserves a degree of special treatment.
Since the introduction of the jet, businessmen have taken over running the airlines in the belief that they can use this wonderfully quick transport system to become rich. However, they fail to understand the airman's ethos which lies behind the past 80 years of aviation's successful growth.
The 1944 Chicago Conference set airlines the goal of becoming "Safe, Secure and Economic" - in that order. To achieve these laudable goals, airlines require the benign support of the state - meaning that they will never be a normal industry.
The reality is quite the reverse.
Maurice McGreal
Auckland, New Zealand.
Source: Flight International
