ABSTRACT
The geography of airline flows, both the supply and the demand, results from three main drivers: 1) the geography of prior accumulations (of capital, business activities, administrative functions, immigrants and tourist facilities) and of interactions (e.g. headquarters vs. their subsidiaries, tourists vs. tourist spaces and immigrants vs. their home country) that fundamentally shape the need for mobility (see Derudder and Witlox, this volume); 2) airline strategies that tend to reply to these needs or to induce them; and 3) both national and international regulations that define the environment in which the airlines can (or cannot) expand. Within this basic framework, Europe has witnessed some major changes. Firstly, the formation and expansion of the European Union (EU) created a free market now involving 28 members, mostly extended to the European Economic Area (EEA) 1 and Switzerland. This policy notably led to firms’ concentrations and relocations, more intra-EU international trade, and more medium- and long-distance travel. Europe was also the scene of major geopolitical changes with the disintegration of the communist bloc, the subsequent turn of many East Central European countries to Western Europe, notably through joining the EU, and the breakup of the former USSR, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. Finally, a large part of the European airline market was almost totally liberalised, giving to the airlines a key position in drawing up networks.
