that was really understood by airlines and was something they were somewhat cautious of, the eco- nomies of scale and simplicity of working with one entity. And so we've grown the products throughout the years as well, because you have to adapt all the time. It's amazing how the business has changed in just 20 years, which seems probably a long time to an individual, but it's a fairly short time in terms of aviation. And the way that airlines distribute today, the way that we work today is completely different to the way that we worked 20 years ago. And we've had to adapt to that. And part of that has been brin- ging out new product solutions with the BSP entry solution, which was something that Jean-Louis Baroux came up with very early on; it was a comple- te game changer to the way that the airlines joined BSP at the time as well. The interlining program that we have and now the new NDC (New Distribution Capability) channels too, which we've invested heavi- ly in. And no doubt there will be always further chan- ge in new developments. And so that way of adap- ting will continue.
is going to be 100% politically driven, but there will be political influence over airlines in one way or ano- ther in many areas of the world. But there are equal- ly a lot of airlines in the world that are purely econo- mically driven. And they are driven by revenue gene- ration for growth for the shareholders. But there are airlines that are there for different agendas. And they can be very specific to certain areas of the world or certain countries. We work with a lot of countries, for example, that are island-based. We work with the likes of Air Tahiti Nui, for example. We work with Sata International from the Azores. We work with Air Mauritius from Mauritius. And they obviously have more than one purpose - securing that traffic in and out of destination, be that for dri- ving tourism, which is key to the economy. Or it can be for critical cargo. Had these airlines not existed and other airlines were not flying because the tourists were not flying, then this would have had a major impact on these areas being able to handle the epidemic at the time. And that's just one recent example. They can also be relationship-driven. For example, a lot of Chinese air- lines fly to destinations to encourage strong political connections with those areas. There is of course some element of economic drive behind them also. But there's also an added tier of reasoning for that route, which is to grow both political and economic relationships between two countries. So, there are These airlines were critical in the days of COVID where the import and export of goods was very important, but not just goods, specifically for medication.
Class & Relax Lifestyle Magazine : Richard, is air transport driven by politics or economics?
Richard Burgess : We always pick questions for World Connect that are going to challenge. Especially for airlines, it can be difficult to give an answer. Well, I think it's political in itself as to how they answer, whether it's political or economical. This is the challenge for the airlines themselves. I think a lot of the questions that we choose don't really have a simple answer. And that's the whole point and it's obviously going to vary from airline to airline, from country to country. No airline ultimately
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