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Global air travel may not recover until 2011

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Global air travel may never recover.

As other astute posters have pointed out, the elephant in the room remains a shrinking supply of fuel resources. Addtionally, airlines have yet to find a business model that can address the rising costs of oil in conjunction with providing service that goes above and beyond simply stuffing peoole into a metal tube and sending them from Point A to Point B, damn the consequences of the conditions inside the tube. So services still continue to get trimmed back, airlines still continue to hemmorage money, and consumers still continue to be subjected to nickel-and-dime surcharges on everything from snacks to actual luggage, of all things, to help keep struggling carriers afloat.

Recovery is not in the cards for this industry without serious changes followed by a miracle in fuel innovation.

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sf2k, most people simply don't dare to understand it as the implications are to grave.

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thanks rtega, nice to read a riff on understanding our predicament.

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Long gone are the golden days of the 1960s ...

Yes, the 60's, when flying from Europe to East Asia took 24 hours and involved several stop-overs. Yes, the golden days.

Japan is lucky, it at least has really good national railway and shinkansen.

And what a pity they're no more cheaper than flying. Or perhaps I should say, as expensive as flying.

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Thanks sf2k, you got there earlier than me. Indeed, it's probably never going to recover much. Most probably it's going to go down the drain unless some genius finds some alternate source of cheap energy damn quick. Even the IEA now seems to come to terms with the reality of the end of cheap oil.

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That's funny, I thought the 6% to 8% drop was the dropping of the world percentage of oil production as reported by EIA and Energybulletin. Thus both the drop in demand and a drop in oil availability are going in the same direction.

What happens when one curve goes upward? Even if there is a recovery in 2011, if the oil production rate keeps falling lower and lower there will be demand destruction instead of an uptick or "expansion".

Remember, airlines are the oil canaries-in-a-coalmine, and as such where ever oil production goes, so do they. As oil production resources move downward and costs rise I expect competitors to merge first to save overhead, then after costs can't go down any further they'll demand to be nationalized, then after that fewer airlines or limited rationed days of use.

Japan is lucky, it at least has really good national railway and shinkansen. No more domestic flights are inevitable but I suspect planes and their fuel will be saved for international routes only.

Tom Whipple articles here: http://tinyurl.com/muup75 from http://www.energybulletin.net

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Hong Kong, too crowded, air is bad, city layout and design are horrible. Only prefer New Territories and those islands, definitely not the main street as the effect of those high rise surrounding the so-call harbour (or should I say river now) causing all those heat and exhausted trapped inside the city core.

I still like the old airport when a plane land between buildings and it was kind of like a star wars x-wing fighter flying into the death star.

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It's not the end of the world. That's in 2012.

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Global air travel may not recover until 2011

Actually it may not recover in 2011 either.

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The environmentalists and some politicians, e.g Gordon Brown, are happy with less flights - less CO2 emissions and environmental impact - but manufacturers, shareholders, pension funds, the travel, service and tourist industries and all travelers (i.e. just about everyone else) are unhappy.

But flying now has become such a stressing experience with numbers of checks, clearances, and interminable queues, that it may never recover to the levels of the 80s and 90s...

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The758

Long gone are the golden days of the 1960s ...

What are you talking about? did you ever sit in an airplane in the 60's? Seats were horrible, but the stewardess gals were hot.

This article is about projected recovery. I hope they increase the number of flights as it recovers, or we will be in for lots of trouble.

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Long gone are the golden days of the 1960s ...

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