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This chapter examines the torsions and blind spots that structure the contemporary debate on the politics and policy of aviation. It also generates different scenarios for the future of air travel, which can help to unblock the current impasse about the perceived costs and benefits of aviation and its attendant infrastructural needs.

This chapter characterises and evaluates the competing frames that organise the contested realities of air transport. By mapping out the current fault lines of aviation politics and policy, the chapter is also able to delineate four main scenarios regarding the future of aviation, which we name the ‘post-carbon’, ‘high-modernist’, ‘market regulation’ and ‘demand management’ projections respectively.

The chapter problematises and criticises the existing literature, policy reports and stakeholder briefings that inform the contemporary standoff in UK aviation policy. It uses the definition of sustainable development as a heuristic device to map and identify the fault lines structuring contemporary debates on aviation futures. It then builds upon this analysis to delimit four different scenarios for the future of flying.

The chapter analyses the contested realities of aviation politics. It re-affirms the political nature of such divisions, which in turn structure the rival understandings of aviation. The analysis suggests that the identified fault lines are constantly reiterated by competing appeals to ambiguous and contradictory evidence-bases or policy frames. Ultimately, the chapter claims that any significant reframing of aviation policy and politics rests on the outcome of political negotiations and persuasion. But it also depends on the broader views of citizens and stakeholders about the future challenges facing society, as well as the way in which governments and affected agents put in place and coordinate the multiple arenas in which a dialogue over the future of aviation can be held. Aviation futures cannot be reduced to the narrow confines of the technical merits or claims surrounding the feasibility of policy instruments.

The chapter discusses two main themes: shifts in the global geography of aviation toward the developing world and several threats to the future growth of air transportation. The past two decades have witnessed a remarkable realignment of air passenger and air cargo traffic toward middle-income countries and the hubs within those countries.

The chapter documents these shifts, drawing on analyses of airline capacity around the world in 1998 and 2012. Given more rapid population and economic growth in Asia, the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America, further such developments seem likely. However, the chapter also reviews some of the principal challenges confronting aviation in its second century. These include the higher price of oil, the political challenges involved in building new airport infrastructure (especially in rich democracies), and efforts to limit the increase in greenhouse gas emissions and other air transportation externalities.

The chapter concludes that none of these challenges is very likely to reverse the long-term growth of air traffic but will instead intersect with the broader shift toward emerging markets to produce a still more complex geography of air services. The chapter further contends that the continued expansion of aviation will bring both daunting challenges to the world but also new opportunities to the low-income countries still marginalized in today’s airline networks.

Aviation is not only one of the key contributors to the economy and social structure of the world but it is also an industry whose environmental impacts are being closely monitored. Aircraft efficiency and technological advancements have significantly reduced aviation noise and emissions in recent decades. Nevertheless, as the need for passenger and freight transportation grows, the aviation sector is becoming a primary source of environmental issues and a significant driver of global warming. This chapter focusses on environmentally sustainable aviation with a net-zero emission target. It also highlights sustainable aviation policies and collaborative initiatives in the aviation industry to meet the 2050 net-zero emission goal. While the industry's efforts have increased opportunities recently, the industry has also had to face several challenges to achieve the net-zero aviation target.

European air transport policy, emerged through the confluence of case law and legislation, in four broad areas: liberalization, safety and security, greening, and the external policy. Following the implementation of the single market for air transport, policy shifted to liberalizing and regulating associated services and in recent years to greening, the external aviation policy, and safety and security. Inclusion of air transport in the Environmental Trading Scheme of the European Union exemplifies the European Commission’s proactive stand on bringing the industry in line with emission reduction trajectories of other industries. However, the bid to include flights to third countries in the trading scheme pushed the EU into a controversial position, causing the Commission to halt implementation and to give ICAO time to seek a global multilateral agreement. The chapter also discusses how the nationality clauses in air services agreements breached the Treaty of Rome, and a court ruling to that effect enabled the EC to extend EU liberalization policies beyond the European Union, resulting in the Common Aviation Area with EU fringe countries and the Open Aviation Area with the USA. Another important area of progress was aviation safety, where the EU region is unsurpassed in the world, yet the Commission has pushed the boundary even further, by establishing the European Safety Agency to oversee the European Aviation Safety Management System. Another important area of regulatory development was aviation security, a major focus after the woeful events in 2001, but increasingly under industry scrutiny on costs and effectiveness. The chapter concludes by arguing that in the coming decade, the EU will strive to strengthen its position as a global countervailing power, symbolized in air transport by a leadership position in environmental policy and international market liberalization, exemplified in the EU’s external aviation policy.

This paper presents the safety case for the consideration of cross-cultural factors in aviation by focusing on cultural interfaces, those situations where members of one culture encounter people or artifacts from other cultures. Global aviation is strongly influenced by the USA and Western Europe as the largest manufacturers and largest customers; hence almost all cultural interfaces are weighted in favor of the dominant users. The challenge for safety is not to ignore or eliminate these interfaces but to manage the potential threats they pose. To move forward, there is a role for those inside and outside the dominant model.

The civil aviation sector in Dubai has been contributing to its economic development by enhancing transportation services, allowing for the establishment of trade links, promoting tourism and providing job opportunities. Despite being a thriving sector of economic activity (Dubai was the third busiest airport in the world in 2018), a common understanding among the stakeholders on the sector’s long-term sustainability strategy is missing. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the identification of important sustainability indicators in the civil aviation sector in Dubai.

This study uses the stakeholder theory to identify sustainability indicators. It deploys a qualitative research design that collects data through multiple focus groups, and it accounts for the stakeholders’ views toward key sustainability indicators. This research classified stakeholders completely in a separate matrix preventing their integration and therefore the confounding of their views. The study addresses the complexity of sustainability in the sector and identifies key indicators based on comprehensive and valid data from different stakeholders. The study focuses separately on the three pillars of sustainability: social, economic and environmental sustainability and identifies sustainability indicators for each pillar from the views of stakeholders. The study uses thematic analysis to produce results by identifying themes according to the collected data.

The study finds that there is a lack of sustainability knowledge and awareness in the civil aviation sector in Dubai despite its buoyant growth and expansion. The results show that stakeholders highlight the importance of social sustainability indicators that value equitable development in the pursuit of business goals. They also value economic sustainability indicators that focus on changing consumption patterns and increasing preservation. They finally focus on environmental sustainability indicators that promote eco-efficiency and renewable energy. However, considerable differences exist among stakeholders regarding the importance and priority of their suggested indicators.

The implications of the study are theoretical and practical. In the case of the former, it would contribute toward the reduction of uncertainty in the civil aviation sector in Dubai regarding the policy actions required to improve the sector’s sustainability. It is done by identifying the stakeholders’ views on the key sustainability indicators for each pillar of sustainability. In the case of practical implications, the outcomes of the study highlight specific directions that policy actions should take. Although the results are local, they can have tentative global policy implications. Finally, the results of the study are instrumental in addressing the sustainability debate within the civil aviation sector not only in Dubai but also globally.

The study extends existing research efforts to identify sustainability indicators in the civil aviation sector by considering the three different pillars of sustainability and by accounting for the diverse stakeholders’ views on the identification of key sustainability indicators. The study should be extended to account for the role of technological readiness in the region of other innovative approaches in the current civil aviation sectors.

To examine the role of new aeronautical technologies in improving commercial aviation’s environmental performance.

Reviews the environmental improvements that may be conferred through the adoption of alternative aviation fuels and new airframe, engine and navigation technologies.

Although aeronautical technologies have evolved considerably since the earliest days of powered flight, the aviation industry is now reaching a point of diminishing returns as growing global consumer demand for air transport outstrips incremental improvements in environmental efficiency. The chapter describes some of the technological interventions that are being pursued to improve aviation’s environmental performance and discusses the extent to which these innovations will help to deliver a more sustainable aviation industry.

The current outbreak of COVID-19 is an unprecedented event in air transportation. In this study, we investigate the impact of COVID-19 on global air transportation through the lens of complex networks different at different scales, ranging from worldwide airport networks where airports are nodes and links between airports exist when direct flights exist, to international country networks where countries are contracted as nodes, and to domestic airport networks for representative countries/regions. We focus on the spatial-temporal evolutionary dynamics of COVID-19 in air transportation networks, discovering hidden patterns on flight frequency reduction. Our study provides a comprehensive empirical analysis on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on aviation from a complex system perspective.

This study aims to develop an inclusive, multidisciplinary, flexible and organizationally adaptable safety risk management framework, including diversity management, that will be implemented to ensure safety is and remains at the desired level. If the number of incidents and potential incidents that could lead to accidents and their impact rates are to be reduced operationally and administratively, aviation safety risks and sources of risk must be better understood, sources of risk identified, and the safety risk management framework designed in an organization-specific and organization-wide sustainable way. At this point, it is necessary to draw the conceptual framework well and to define the boundaries of the concepts well. In this study, a framework model that can be adapted to the organization is proposed to optimize the management of risks and provide both efficient and effective resource allocation and organizational structure design in its operations and management functions.

The qualitative research method – triple techniques – was deemed appropriate for this study, which aims to identify, examine, interpret and develop the situations of safety management models. In this context, document analysis, business process modeling technique and Delphi techniques from qualitative research methods were used via integration as the methodology of this research.

To manage dynamic civil aviation management activities and business processes effectively and efficiently, the risk management process is the building block of the “Proposed Process Model” that supports the decision-making processes of aviation organizations and managers. This “Framework Conceptual Model” building block also helps build capacity and resilience by enabling continuous development, organizational learning, and flexible structuring.

This research is limited to air transportation and aviation safety management issues. This research is limited specifically to a safety-based risk management framework for the aviation industry. This research may have social implications as source saving, optimum resource use and capacity building will make a contribution to society and add value besides operational and practical implementation.

This research may contribute to more safe operations and functions in the aviation industry.

Management and academia may gain considerable support from this research to manage their safety risks via a corporate-tailored risk management framework, both improving resilience and developing corporate capacity. With this model presented, decision-makers will have a guiding structure that can optimally manage the main risk types that may be encountered in the safety risk in the fields of suppliers, manufacturers, demand changes, logistics, information management, environmental, legal and regulatory. Existing studies in the literature are generally in the form of algorithms and cannot be used as a decision-making support tool. This model aims to fill the gap in the literature. In addition, added value may be created by applying this model to optimum management safety risks in the real aviation industry and its related sectors.