The low-cost airlines have not just introduced a new economic model; they have attracted new customers with new patterns of behaviour that are changing the rules of the game. Since the end of WW II, for almost half a century, the air transport industry developed according to the same traditional model. Even if its end customers were individuals, it operated very much along the lines of the B-to-B model. The vast majority of high-yield air passengers were travelling for direct or indirect professional reasons. In other words, they needed to travel for economic reasons and air transport was simply the most efficient means to do so. In fact, air transport developed where it did not face any real competition. It prospered on long-haul and transoceanic routes as well as in zones where no efficient ground transportation system was in place. Like the commercial steamships and trains a few decades before, aircraft have been key in the development of international trade. They have largely contributed to what is now known as "globalisation".
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