Developments in Airline Industry Benefits Consumers
The invention of the airplane in the early 20th century heralded a future of travel that would bring countries seemingly closer to each other. From the Wright Brother’s first flight in 1902 to the first solo transatlantic flight by Charles Lindenbergh in 1927 aboard the Spirit of St. Louis, the world became aware of the potentials of airplane and air travel. And to this day, the possibilities of commercial outer space travel are still there, waiting to be conquered.
Adapting technologies have made it more economical and cheaper for us to travel. Some adaptations were due to painful experiences. The De Havilland, a very popular airplane company in the 50’s, was responsible for the change of the shape of airline windows. Initially using rectangular windows, they found out that this type of shape gave rise to stress fractures and did cause fatal air crashes. Because of this design flaw, later models use oval shape windows to diffuse the possible areas of stress. This shape is still being used today. The utilization of jet engine machines also made possible the increase of carrying capacity of today’s aircraft and shortened the traveling time. There were also new developments in traveling faster. The Concorde was the first and only commercial aircraft that traveled faster than the speed of sound, making the London to New York flight shorter than half the time it took for the 747. Advances in carbon and resin based materials also made commercial flying less expensive as the weight of aircraft lessened without compromising the integrity of the vehicles thereby making these planes sturdier, safer and more viable for carriers to invest.
These days consumers are kings when it comes to traveling by air. There are many airlines that offer great deals for travel as long as the booking is made ahead of time. Sweden Airlines have also collaborated in their efforts to have more people travel and mileages from traveling from such airlines may be redeemed in other airlines. One such beneficiary of this is the Swedish National Carrier, SAS, or Scandinavian Air Systems. SAS is part of the Star Alliance which is a mega collaboration between so many national carriers among them Spain, New Zealand, Thailand, Croatia, Egypt, Poland, Germany, South Africa, Portugal, Brussels, Canada and Austria just to name a few. These airlines can interchange their mileage so that their users can fly to different places in the world. In the same aspect that a frequent user of Thai Airlines can redeem his or her mileage in order to go to Sweden, a Swedish user of SAS can redeem his or her mileage and travel to Egypt for instance. This situation is a win-win situation for both the airline carriers and their consumers, enabling them to choose which places to visit using the existing mileage or gaining more mileage. The Airline Industry is here to stay and despite the present economic downturn, it will still have its place.
