Disclaimer: This text reflects only the opinion of its author and does not in any way commit the official word of the French Air and Space Academy.
By Jean-Claude RIPOLL, Full Member
The air transport system has continued to evolve and could be considered mature when the major constraints on energy resources and climate impacts became clearer. Elevated to the rank of “crises”, these constraints receive a differentiated treatment in public opinion under the influence of the politicized media: the climate emergency has invaded everything, in a rather disorderly way, while the real energy emergency is forgotten, or concealed. The very real and immediate health crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic has obviously deeply affected air transport. The profound and prolonged impact has completely changed the outlook, and the most lobbie forecasts have given way to more nuanced ambitions. On the one hand, growth and the level of traffic are fundamentally reduced, and on the other hand, practices resulting from major constraints call for further reductions. The social-economic mechanisms governing the demand for air mobility are complex and depend on meta-parameters such as demography, the resolution of inequalities, the “civilizational” evolution of many countries, and climate change. It is therefore pretentious to want to describe the future system, only a form of extrapolation is possible. This approach is consistent with the inertia of the system: despite unplanned rates in the ’80s, the renewal of fleets is very gradual, and the heavy infrastructure of airports is stabilized…