Air transport

Air transport Objective Air Transport Industry is one of the best prototypes of the future world where all human activities will be integrated including administrations, companies and contractors. In that respect Air Transport Industry gives an idea of the world for which PageBox has been designed. This document does not explain how to travel at a bargain price. However it also gives background information that can help you making clever choices. Why Air transport is special To provide its service Air Transport Industry must combine the effort of: people who sell the service, for instance Travel Agents; people who operate aircrafts, airlines; people who operate airports; traffic controllers; customs; police; ... Because this service is provided across countries, it also requires the cooperation of governments. Aircrafts are one of the most blatant applications of military research to civil needs. A company that knows how to make civil aircrafts also knows how to make military aircrafts. A civil aircraft can be used to carry troops. A pilot can pilot a military aircraft. For these reasons Air Transport activities have been subsidized, protected and heavily regulated. Aircrafts are one century old. In the first half century progress has been extremely fast with frequent breakthroughs. In the second half century progress has been much smaller. Aircraft speed did not increase; the most significant changes, wide body and turbo fans took place at the same time as the legacy organization described below. On the other hand this is only then that Air Transport changed people life. Like computers and Internet now, aircrafts used to incarnate modernity and to trigger the same kind of passion. Air Transport did not have to be profitable. Air Transport early became a global industry requiring the cooperation of independent organizations, private companies of different size and civil servants. These organizations communicated in a B2B model well before the 2000’. Another aspect is the weight of the legacy. With so many involved countries with so different resources, interests and timetables the big bang is never an option. The Air transport system must remain compatible with 20-years old equipments. As a consequence the Air Transport system is increasingly complex and maybe the main contribution of the computers has been to enable this growing complexity. An optimal Air Transport system must combine conflicting interests like safety, low fares and noise acceptable for Airport neighbours. The involved organizations are different lifecycles. You can create a Travel Agency in a couple of days and an Airline in a couple of months but you must plan a new Airport twenty years in advance. Such a system needs regulations and the problem is to identify which regulations are needed and which regulations actually protect special interests. Legacy organization We chose to start with the Air Industry organization put in place in the 70’s and the 80’s. This organization has roots in the Convention relating to the Regulation of Aerial Navigation signed in Paris, October 13, 1929 and in the Convention for the Unification of Certain Rules Relating to International Transportation by Air signed at Warsaw, October 12, 1929. For an update of the Warsaw convention, just read a passenger ticket. A regulation authority was put in place, the IATA that stood for International Air Traffic Association between 1919 and WWII and stands for International Air Transport Association since 1945. See the IATA history pages for the whole story. IATA has two functions: trade Association (technical, legal, financial, traffic services and most agency matters); tariff Coordination (passenger fares and cargo rates, agents' commissions). There are three things to keep in mind: The scope of IATA encompasses all Air Transport activities. IATA only controls International flights. However because they must comply with the IATA processes the involved parties tend to apply the same processes to domestic flights. http://www.iata.org/ is definitely worth a visit. However do note expect to find anything for free. Nowadays much of the IATA's revenues come from selling its products and services to Member airlines, to other airlines and to other companies involved in the travel, transport and tourism industry. Some companies were created. The most important in an historical perspective are SITA, OAG and ATPCO. Societe Internationale des communications aeronautiques (SITA) handles shared communication means, including network and devices. For instance when you check-in or board the PC and the device used to print and process the boarding pass does not belong to the Airline. For the next departure from the same gate another airline will reuse those PC and device. Such shared equipments are often installed and maintained by SITA. Computer Reservation systems, later called Global Distribution Systems (GDS), were created by Airlines to allow Travel Agents to make online bookings. Then four GDSs emerged from a consolidation phase, which account for 85% of CRS terminals, Sabre created by American, Worldspan created among others by Delta and Northwest, Galileo and Amadeus created by European airlines. These super GDSs are huge transactional systems that process around 5000 requests per second from 40000 to 50000 terminals. They operate mainframe clusters running Operating Systems from IBM (TPF) and Unisys (OS/2200). They initially operated only hierarchical networks with protocols like X25 and character datastreams. Now they also support TCP and Internet access. GDSs allow making booking on airlines that accept to pay a booking fee. GDSs are more and more independent of their founding companies. OAG stands for Official Airline Guide. This book is published by the homonymous company and contains the airline schedule information, so for every flight essentially: the departure and destination airports, the departure and arrival times, the flight number. Today the OAG maintains an airline schedules database, which holds flight details for 1000 airlines and more than 3000 airports and is updated around ten times a second. Airline Tariff Publishing Company (ATPCO) is a fare distributing company. This paper presents its work

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The History of Transportation

The history of transport evolved with the development of human culture. Long distance walking tracks developed as trade routes in paleolithic times. For most of human history the only forms of transport apart from walking were using domesticated animals or transport in small boats

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Transportation

Transportation or penal transportation is the deporting^[1] of convicted criminals to a penal colony. Examples include transportation by France to Devil's Island and by the UK to its colonies in the Americas, from the 1610s through the American Revolution in the 1770s, and then to Australia between 1788 and 1868ransportation or penal transportation is the deporting^[1] of convicted criminals to a penal colony. Examples include transportation by France to Devil's Island and by the UK to its colonies in the Americas, from the 1610s through the American Revolution in the 1770s, and then to Australia between 1788 and 1868

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Transport

Transport or transportation is the movement of people and goods from one location to another. Modes of transport include air, rail, road, water, cable, pipeline, and space. The field can be divided into infrastructure, vehicles, and operations. Transport is important since it enables trade between peoples, which in turn establishes civilizations.
Transport infrastructure consists of the fixed installations necessary for transport, and may be roads, railways, airways, waterways, canals and pipelines, and terminals such as airports, railway stations, bus stations, warehouses, trucking terminals, refueling depots (including fueling docks and fuel stations), and seaports. Terminals may be used both for interchange of passengers and cargo and for maintenance.
Vehicles traveling on these networks may include automobiles, bicycles, buses, trains, trucks, people, helicopters, and aircraft. Operations deal with the way the vehicles are operated, and the procedures set for this purpose including financing, legalities and policies. In the transport industry, operations and ownership of infrastructure can be either public or private, depending on the country and mode.
Passenger transport may be public, where operators provide scheduled services, or private. Freight transport has become focused on containerization, although bulk transport is used for large volumes of durable items. Transport plays an important part in economic growth and globalization, but most types cause air pollution and use large amounts of land. While it is heavily subsidized by governments, good planning of transport is essential to make traffic flow, and restrain urban sprawl.

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Water

Water transport is the process of transport a watercraft, such as a barge, boat, ship or sailboat, makes over a body of water, such as a sea, ocean, lake, canal or river. The need for buoyancy unites watercraft, and makes the hull a dominant aspect of its construction, maintenance and appearance.
In the 19th century the first steam ships were developed, using a steam engine to drive a paddle wheel or propeller to move the ship. The steam was produced using wood or coal. Now most ships have an engine using a slightly refined type of petroleum called bunker fuel. Some ships, such as submarines, use nuclear power to produce the steam. Recreational or educational craft still use wind power, while some smaller craft use internal combustion engines to drive one or more propellers, or in the case of jet boats, an inboard water jet. In shallow draft areas, hovercraft are propelled by large pusher-prop fans.
Although slow, modern sea transport is a highly effective method of transporting large quantities of non-perishable goods. Commercial vessels, nearly 35,000 in number, carried 7.4 billion tons of cargo in 2007.^[9] Transport by water is significantly less costly than air transport for transcontinental shipping;^[10] short sea shipping and ferries remain viable in coastal areas.^[11][12]

 

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Road transport

A road is an identifiable route, way or path between two or more places.^[4] Roads are typically smoothed, paved, or otherwise prepared to allow easy travel;^[5] though they need not be, and historically many roads were simply recognizable routes without any formal construction or maintenance.^[6] In urban areas, roads may pass through a city or village and be named as streets, serving a dual function as urban space easement and route.^[7]
The most common road vehicle is the automobile; a wheeled passenger vehicle that carries its own motor. Other users of roads include buses, trucks, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians. As of 2002, there were 590 million automobiles worldwide.
Automobiles offer high flexibility and with low capacity, but are deemed with high energy and area use, and the main source of noise and air pollution in cities; buses allow for more efficient travel at the cost of reduced flexibility.^[8] Road transport by truck is often the initial and final stage of freight transport.

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