only provide those services but do it in a strongly economic way, so they're not only contributing from an operational point of view but potentially contributing from an economic point of view of producing profit for the governments as ultimate shareholders. That's a big challenge to meet those two criteria. And we're often talking about countries that have relatively small economies in the first place. As most people will tell you, running an airline is quite an expensive business and can be quite an unprofitable business if not done well. So, these airlines can also typically be quite a large cost burden on an economy such as an island nation. It's that offset which is always a very challenging political offset as to how much can you support these carriers and how much is the value to these island nations of maintaining their own airline. You don't see many of these islands giving up, for example Malta. They're always trying to find a way of maintaining their national carriers. And yes, they would much rather these airlines contribute rather than be a cost to those economies. And I don't see that changing particularly because aviation is always going to be a very expen- sive business that is subject to geographical and political pro- blems as we've talked about with war, with unknowns like COVID. And you have to adapt your circumstances to that, as costs don't go away. And equally with the Russia situation as it is now, many airlines are having to reroute through different airspace, and so this is becoming more challenging for different carriers. All of these factors appear on a CEO's desk day in, day out. So, this is not always the politics in your home country, but politics everywhere that can impact your ability to operate your airline profitably.
all of these factors that are involved. Sometimes governments step back. Sometimes they're extremely involved in a national airline, not necessarily always for the good, but not always neces- sarily for the bad either. The answer is different for every airline. There's no right or wrong answer, and each airline will have a dif- ferent agenda. So, the answer is both politics and economics drive airlines. It just depends on the airline. These challenges are also present here in Malta where we are hosting WorldConnect this year. Obviously the national airline is going through a rebirth if you will, because of the challenges they have had over the years. I think what is challenging for these air- lines is where they have a large responsibility placed on them because of circumstances and potentially political pressure as we discussed, to bring tourists into the area for these places that rely on that enormously for their economy and, as I say, also from a cargo perspective, whereas otherwise the island is subject to the vagaries of whether the route makes commercial sense for other carriers that may or may not operate. But then they are increasingly having more and more economic pressure from local government to be self-sustainable, that they have to not
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