ABSTRACT
In conventional transport and tourism research, business travel has traditionally been seen as an output of work and business activities in the global economy. Although business mobility has never been John Urry’s core focus, over the years he has played a strong supportive role to help this research field move forward, as he did with many other fields. In September 2006, John Urry and Sven Kesselring took the initiative to the conference titled ‘Air-Times-Spaces: New Methods for Researching Mobilities’, which was hosted at Lancaster University. The works of a number of international experts who presented at the conference were published in the first book on aeromobilities. Although air travel is a critical component of global competition amongst companies, cities and nations, only a limited number of social science research projects on aviation and airports had been carried out before the book was published.
