ABSTRACT
The view from Victorville In early 2009, the number of commercial aircraft in storage reached nearly 2,300 or about 10 percent of the world’s total fleet (Ascend 2009). The grounded airliners were stored mainly in deserts of the American Southwest and Central Asia. At one important site, the Southern California Logistics Airport (formerly George Air Force Base) in Victorville, California, scores of aircraft were lined up in neat rows in mid-2009 forming a multibillion dollar parking lot on the edge of the Mojave. Some of the jets were old, Douglas DC-8s and Boeing 747-100s for instance; but some were much newer, including Boeing 747-400s and Airbus A320s forced from the sky by one of the worse downturns in the airline industry’s history. Singapore Airlines, for instance, which is famous for its youthful fleet, had 18 aircraft in storage in early 2009 including at least one freighter in Victorville (Wong 2009). Many of the grounded airliners will see revenue service again. Indeed, the whole point of desert storage is to minimize corrosion during what is expected to be temporary storage. But this time may be different, with many fewer grounded planes returning to work. Indeed, in an industry prone to crisis, this crisis seems different and may more strongly shape the future trajectory of air transportation, and it is that future trajectory that is the subject of this final chapter. In the near term, it is easy enough to predict further consolidation especially in the most liberalized markets, a high fatality rate among fragile neophyte low-cost carriers, and a slowdown in the pace of sales and rate of innovation by the world’s plane-makers. Boeing and Airbus, for instance, have put off the introduction of replacements for the 737 and A320 and have instead opted for major mid-career revamps of each narrowbody workhorse (Kingsley-Jones and Ostrower 2009). Airbus, specifically, has said that no A320 replacement will be introduced before 2020. What then? What will happen after 2020 as we move even deeper into the second century of air transportation? Prognosis in so dynamic a part of the economy is a hazardous affair, but in this final chapter I sketch two basic scenarios. In the first, technological change, so important to the historical development of aviation, perpetuates its expansion. In the second, the decades-long growth of air transportation at the expense of alternate modes is reversed; fewer people and
fewer goods move by air; and everyday life slows down and becomes less spatially attenuated. The chapter ends with my speculation about which scenario is more likely to come to fruition.
