Crossing the distances across continents has become expensive. As the global financial and economic crisis strengthened the hold of the recession, spending on travel became no long a priority or a necessity, for many categories among global consumers. In fact, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) has determined that the number of passengers worldwide has declined by 4 percent this year, while the volume of cargo shipped declined by 14 percent. As such, many major airlines incurred losses in the hundreds of millions of dollars, while the total expected losses worldwide is expected to be 11 billion dollars, or 15 percent of the total revenues of civil aviation, as disclosed by the IATA. Also, the transit traffic in both local and international airspaces is declining, with the small to medium-sized companies being the most vulnerable to loss. Of course, the facts mentioned above govern the cost of transporting both people and cargo. Inevitably then, this cost will be added to the economic components of the calculation of the global production inputs, or in what relates to the citizens' individual income, up until it contributes to increasing inflation rates. With rising fuel prices also, airfares remain susceptible to price increases at any moment. Nonetheless, the competitiveness of “low cost” carriers which have only been around for a decade or so, and whose effective share of the civil aviation market amounts to 15 percent, is pushing the high-cost airlines to search for new means to boost their revenues, especially when the major airlines among these are incurring heavy losses in millions of dollars. This is while noting that these latter airlines have followed in the footsteps of major corporations in cutting their costs, and reducing their financial liabilities, whether by cutting jobs or suspending certain services and even increasing ticket prices, in addition to cancelling flight routes that do not provide sufficient revenues. Moreover, airlines are no longer generous in providing free services, as they are now following the suit of low-cost carriers to partially make up for their losses. The principle behind this is simple: they now add what have been hitherto free services to their bills. In fact, it was the Spanish carrier Iberia that paved the way for this practice, by charging 15 Euros (22.2 USD) for passenger check-ins as of last October. In the beginning of October also, the British Airways announced that it will charge 45 Euros for each additional luggage item, in particular on board flights bound for the United States. Furthermore, American carriers American, Continental, and Delta have been charging this fee since last spring, while United Airlines is offering an annual subscription fee of 249 dollars for unlimited check-in of cargo goods. Airlines then went even further than charging fees for their previously free services by inventing new ones: For instance, British Airways now give the passengers the option to select their seats in Economy Class in return for 15 dollars, and 60 dollars in Business Class. Air France meanwhile offers the seats near the emergency exits for 50 Euros, while Lufthansa provides internet access on board its flights in return for 10 Euros per hour. This last service will be offered as of mid-2010. As such, the revenues of these services – according to a number of global reports – have risen by 346 percent in two years, and across the 92 most important airlines in the world. This revenue rose to about 11.2 billion dollars in 2008, in comparison to 2.5 billion dollars in 2006. In 2013, the revenues of the services which have been previously offered free of charge are expected to amount to 10 to 15 percent of the volume of business [of airlines]. The reality of the losses incurred by the international airlines places them at the forefront of other major challenges, particularly in terms of securing the technical services and regular maintenance of their fleets and carriers. This reality also affects their ability to renew their fleets which in turn has its tolls on the global aviation industry, especially the giant corporations Boeing and Airbus; in fact, the latter is already facing additional financial difficulties whenever the Euro is on the rise. For this reason, Airbus started producing aircrafts in China, given the low cost there, and is attempting to expand the domestic Chinese market as this latter will definitely require more planes in the future. Pending the improvement of the travel and tourism market, the major airlines are considering the adoption of paid services similar to the ones offered by the low-cost carriers, which have realized a significant progress in income and profits. The revenues generated by the paid services offered by European low-cost airlines for instance, now amount to a decent share of their volume of business: between 2006 and 2008, the revenues of these services offered by RyanAir rose from 16.2 to 19.3 percent of its business volume, and from 8.8 to 15.5 percent for EasyJet, 4 to 8.9 percent for American Airlines, 3.6 to 7.9 percent for United, and from naught to 6.6 for Delta Airlines. It is also expected that the low cost civil aviation will hog a 19.9 percent share of the travel market this year. The number of air travellers around the world is equivalent to the earth's population, where in 2007 they were 4 percent and 4.6 billion; thus, their diminishing number will not affect many companies, but the additional costs will ultimately render air transport more expensive.
