ABSTRACT
Although air transportation is now standard operating procedure for many companies, the air cargo industry remains substantially smaller than its passenger counterpart,2 but the growth of air freight has steadily outpaced that of passenger traffic for decades (see Figure 3.1). Between 1950 and 2008, global air freight tonne-kilometers grew at a scorching average annual rate of 9.3 percent compared to already hot average growth rate of 8.7 percent for passengerkilometers (ICAO 1998; Flint 2008), and in the 1990s the ratio between the rates of growth of freight and passenger traffic was wider than in any previous decade. Much as with air passenger traffic, the expansion of air cargo traffic has had important ramifications for life on the ground. Inexpensive passenger fares have pushed the pleasure periphery outward; inexpensive air cargo rates helped bring the fresh produce of the rest of the world into our supermarkets. The speed of air passenger services has allowed us to get very far very fast; the speed of air cargo services has allowed us to get things from very far away very fast. And much as abundant, relatively low-cost air passenger services have not only freed people to travel far but also – to some degree – forced them to travel more and farther, so too the freedom afforded by air cargo services has come with its own imperatives as businesses and their employees find that they must stretch out and move faster to keep abreast of their competitors.
