title: Houri

text: "buxom" or "full bosomed"). At least two Islamic Fatwa sites (islamweb.net and islamqa.info) have attacked the use of these translations by those who "criticize the Quran", or who "seek to make Islam appear to be a religion of sex and desire".


title: Houri

text: Ibn Kathir, in his tafsir, writes that "kawa'ib" has been interpreted to refer to "fully developed" or "round breasts ... they meant by this that the breasts of these girls will be fully rounded and not sagging, because they will be virgins." Similarly, the authoritative Arabic-English Lexicon of Edward William Lane defines the word "ka'ib" as "A girl whose breasts are beginning to swell, or become prominent, or protuberant or having swelling, prominent, or protuberant, breasts."


title: Houri

text: However, M. A. S. Abdel Haleem and others point out that the description here refers in classical usage to the young age rather than emphasizing the women's physical features.


title: Houri

text: Others, such as Abdullah Yusuf Ali, translate "ka'ib" as "companions", with Muhammad Asad interpreting the term as being allegorical.


title: Houri

text: However, others object that the narration granting all men seventy-two wives has a weak chain of narrators.


title: Houri

text: Another hadith, also in "Jami at-Tirmidhi" and deemed "good and sound" ("hasan sahih") gives this reward specifically for the martyr:


title: Houri

text: In the Quran, there is no overt mention of sexual intercourse in Paradise. However, its existence has been reported in hadiths, tafsirs and Islamic commentaries.


title: Houri

text: The virgins of paradise "they will be of one age, thirty-three years old," according to Ibn Kathir, (as reported by Ad-Dahhak aka Ibn Abi Asim) based on his interpretation of the word "Atrab" () in Q.56:37).<br>


title: Houri

text: But another interpretation of "Atrab" (in Q.56:37 and also Q.78:33) by Muhammad Haleen, describes Houri "as being of similar age to their companions". An Islamic Books pamphlet also states Houri will "have the same age as their husbands so that they can relate to each other better", but also adds that they will "never become old"; (Translations of Q.56:37 and Q.78:33 -- for example by Mustafa Khattab's the Clear Quran and by Pickthall -- often include the phrase "equal age" but don't specify what the houris are of equal age to.)


title: Houri

text: On the other hand, the houris were created "without the process of birth", according to a classical Sunni interpretation of Q.56:35 in Tafsir al-Jalalayn, so that the heavenly virgins have no birthday or age in the earthly sense.<br>


title: Houri

text: Other sources, including a tafsir of Ibn Kathir, (see above) emphasize the purpose of the use of "kawa'ib" in verse Q.78:33 "is to highlight the woman’s youthfulness", though she is an adult, she "has reached the age when she begins to menstruate"; and that she is of the age of "young girls when their breasts are beginning to appear". At least one person (M Faroof Malik) translates in verse Q.55:56 as "bashful virgins".


title: Houri

text: Sunni sources mention that like all men and women of Paradise, the houris do not experience urination, defecation or menstruation.


title: Houri

text: According to Smith and Haddad, if there is any generalization that can be made of "contemporary attitudes" toward the nature of the hereafter, including Houri, it is that it is "beyond human comprehension ... beyond time", that the Quran only "alluded to analogously".


title: Houri

text: According to 8th Shia Imam, Imam Reza, the heavenly spouses are created of dirt (Creation of life from clay) and


title: Houri

text: It has traditionally been believed that the houris are beautiful women who are promised as a reward to believing men, with numerous "hadith" and Quranic exegetes describing them as such.


title: Houri

text: In recent years, however, some have argued that the term "ḥūr" refers both to pure men and pure women (it being the plural term for both the masculine and feminine forms which refer to whiteness) and the belief that the term houris only refers to females who are in paradise is a misconception.


title: Houri

text: The Quran uses feminine as well as gender-neutral adjectives to describe houris, by describing them with the indefinite adjective عِينٌ, which some have taken to imply that certain passages are referring to both male and female companions. In addition, the use of masculine pronouns for the houris' companions does not imply that this companionship is restricted to men, as the masculine form encompasses the female in classical and Quranic Arabic—thus functioning as an all-gender including default form—and is used in the Quran to address all humanity and all the believers in general.


title: Houri

text: In "The Message of The Qur'an", Muhammad Asad describes the usage of the term "ḥūr" in the verses 44:54 & 56:22, arguing that "the noun ḥūr—rendered by me as 'companions pure'—is a plural of both "aḥwār" (masc.) and "ḥawrā"' (fem.)... hence, the compound expression ḥūr ʿīn signifies, approximately, 'pure beings, most beautiful of eye'."


title: Houri

text: Annemarie Schimmel says that the Quranic description of the houris should be viewed in a context of love; "every pious man who lives according to God's order will enter Paradise where rivers of milk and honey flow in cool, fragrant gardens and virgin beloveds await home".


title: Houri

text: Regarding the eschatological status of this-worldly women vis-à-vis the houris, scholars have maintained that righteous women of this life are of a higher station than the hooris. Sunni theologian Aḥmad al-Ṣāwī (d. 1825), in his commentary on Ahmad al-Dardir's work, states, "The sound position is that the women of this world will be seventy thousand times better than the dark-eyed maidens ("ḥūr ʿīn")." Muḥammad ibn ʿUmar Baḥraq (d.1524) mentions in his didactic primer for children that "Adamic women are better than the dark-eyed maidens due to their prayer, fasting, and devotions."


title: Houri

text: Other authorities appear to indicate that houris themselves are the women of this world resurrected in new form, with


title: Houri

text: Razi commenting that among the houris mentioned in the Quran will also be "[even] those toothless old women of yours whom God will resurrect as new beings". Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari mentions that all righteous women, however old and decayed they may have been on earth, will be resurrected as virginal maidens and will, like their male counterparts, remain eternally young in paradise. Modernist scholar Muḥammad ʿAbduh states "the women of the Garden are the good believers ["al-mu'mināt al-ṣalihāt"] known in the Qur'an as "al-ḥūr al-ʿayn", (although he also makes a distinction between earthly women and houri).


title: Houri

text: On the other hand, some narratives describe hur as each intended for an individual "mo'min" (male believer) and "waiting eagerly for him". They look upon the earthly wives of the prospective mates "as rivals, becoming annoyed when the wife is inconsiderate to the man who will come to her in the hereafter." Earthly believing females ("mu'mināt") in paradise ("daughters of Eve"), "are usually said to have one husband each", while males "are often portrayed as having all of their earthly wives plus seventy or more of the ḥūr". Verses that are thought to refer to women from earth in paradise (Q.2:25, 3:15, and 4:57) talk of "purified companions" ["azwāj muṭahhara"], which distinguishes them from ḥūr, who are by definition "pure rather than purified".


title: Houri

text: Muhammad Asad believes that the references to houris and other depictions of paradise should be taken to be allegorical rather than literal, citing the "impossibility of man's really 'imagining' paradise". In support of this view he quotes Quran verse 32:17 and a hadith found in Bukhari and Muslim.


title: Houri

text: Shi'ite philosopher Muhammad Husayn Tabatabai mentions that the most important fact of the description of the houris is that good deeds performed by believers are re-compensated by the houris, who are the physical manifestations of ideal forms that will not fade away over time and who will serve as faithful companions to those whom they accompany.


title: Houri

text: The Zoroastrian text, Hadhoxt Nask, describes the fate of a soul after death. The soul of the righteous spends three nights near the corpse, and at the end of the third night, the soul sees its own religion (daena) in the form of a beautiful damsel, a lovely fifteen year-old virgin; thanks to good actions she has grown beautiful; they then ascend heaven together.


title: Houri

text: Hindu stories include "Apsarasas", described as "seductive celestial nymphs who dwell in Indra's paradise," and among other things "the rewards in Indra's paradise held out to heroes who fall in battle." On the other hand, John MacDonald writes that "the origin" of Huri "is unknown. Attempts to trace the development of the belief back to Indian or Persian religion have not been successful."


title: Nukâka Coster-Waldau

text: Nukâka Coster-Waldau (née Sascha Nukâka Motzfeldt; born 23 February 1971), better known professionally as Nukâka, is a Greenlandic singer, actress, and a former Miss Greenland. She is married to Danish actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and has two daughters with him.


title: Nukâka Coster-Waldau

text: The Greenlandic actress of Inuit, German and Norwegian descent was born in Uummannaq, Greenland, Kingdom of Denmark. She is the daughter of Vivi and Josef Motzfeldt, a Greenlandic politician.


title: Nukâka Coster-Waldau

text: Coster-Waldau participated in the 1990 Miss Universe Pageant, finishing in 19th place in the preliminaries, giving Greenland its highest placement at Miss Universe.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: The economy of Switzerland is one of the world's most advanced and highly-developed free-market economies. The service sector has come to play a significant economic role, particularly the Swiss banking industry and tourism. The economy of Switzerland ranked first in the world since 2015 Global Innovation Index and third in the 2020 Global Competitiveness Report. According to United Nations data for 2016, Switzerland is the third richest landlocked country in the world after Liechtenstein and Luxembourg. Together with the latter and Norway, they are the only three countries in the world with a GDP per capita (nominal) above US$70,000 that are neither island nations nor ministates.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: Switzerland as a federal state was established in 1848. Before that time, the city-cantons of Zurich, Geneva, and Basel in particular began to develop economically based on industry and trade, while the rural regions of Switzerland remained poor and underdeveloped.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: While a workshop system had been in existence throughout the early modern period, the production of machines began in 1801 in St. Gallen, with the third generation of machines imported from Great Britain. But in Switzerland, hydraulic power was often used instead of steam engines because of the country's mountainous topography and lack of significant deposits of coal. By 1814, hand weaving had been mostly replaced by the power loom. Both tourism and banking began to develop as economic factors at about the same time. While Switzerland was primarily rural, the cities experienced an industrial revolution in the late 19th century, focused especially on textiles. In Basel, for example, textiles, including silk, were the leading industry. In 1888, women made up 44% of wage earners. Nearly half the women worked in the textile mills, with household servants the second largest job category. The proportion of women in the workforce was higher between 1890 and 1910 than it was in the late 1960s and 1970s.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: Railways played a major part in industrialization; the first railway opened in 1847, between Zurich and Baden. Despite the competition between private players, Switzerland was covered with more than 1000 km of track by 1860. Nevertheless, the network was barely coordinated because of the decentralised system.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: The industrial sector began to grow in the 19th century with a laissez-faire industrial/trade policy, Switzerland's emergence as one of the most prosperous nations in Europe, sometimes termed the "Swiss miracle", was a development of the mid 19th to early 20th centuries, among other things tied to the role of Switzerland during the World Wars.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: Switzerland's total energy consumption, which was dropping from the mid 1910s to the early 1920s, started to increase again in the early 1920s. It stagnated during the 1930s before falling again during the early 1940s; but rapid growth started once again in the mid 1940s.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: In the 1940s, particularly during World War II, the economy profited from the increased export and delivery of weapons to Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and other European countries. However, Switzerland's energy consumption decreased rapidly. The co-operation of the banks with the Nazis (although they also co-operated extensively with the British and French) and their commercial relations with the Axis powers during the war were later sharply criticised, resulting in a short period of international isolation of Switzerland. Switzerland's production facilities were largely undamaged by the war, and afterwards both imports and exports grew rapidly.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: In the 1950s, annual GDP growth averaged 5% and Switzerland's energy consumption nearly doubled. Coal lost its rank as Switzerland's primary energy source, as other imported fossil fuels, such as crude and refined oil and natural and refined gas, increased.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: In the 1960s, annual GDP growth averaged 4% and Switzerland's total energy consumption nearly doubled again. By the end of the decade oil provided over three-quarters of Switzerland's energy.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: In the 1970s the GDP growth rate gradually declined from a peak of 6.5% in 1970; GDP then contracted by 7.5% in 1975 and 1976. Switzerland became increasingly dependent on oil imported from its main suppliers, the OPEC cartel. The 1973 international oil crisis caused Switzerland's energy consumption to decrease in the years from 1973 to 1978. In 1974 there were three nationwide car-free Sundays when private transport was prohibited as a result of the oil supply shock. From 1977 onwards GDP grew again, although Switzerland was also affected by the 1979 energy crisis which resulted in a short-term decrease in Switzerland's energy consumption. In 1970 industry still employed about 46% of the labor force, but during the economic recession of the 1970s the services sector grew to dominate the national economy. By 1970 17.2% of the population and about one quarter of the work force were foreign nationals, though job losses during the economic recession decreased this number.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: In the 1980s, Switzerland's economy contracted by 1.3% in 1982 but grew substantially for the rest of the decade, with annual GDP growth between about 3% and 4%, apart from 1986 and 1987 when growth decreased to 1.9% and 1.6% respectively.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: Switzerland's economy was marred by slow growth in the 1990s, having the weakest economic growth in Western Europe. The economy was affected by a three-year recession from 1991 to 1993, when the economy contracted by 2%. The contraction also became apparent in Switzerland's energy consumption and export growth rates. Switzerland's economy averaged no appreciable increase (only 0.6% annually) in GDP.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: After enjoying unemployment rates lower than 1% before 1990, the three-year recession also caused the unemployment rate to rise to its all-time peak of 5.3% in 1997. In 2008, Switzerland was in second place among European countries with populations above one million in terms of nominal and purchasing power parity GDP per capita, behind Norway (see list). Several times in the 1990s, real wages decreased since nominal wages could not keep up with inflation. However, beginning in 1997, a global resurgence in currency movement provided the necessary stimulus to the Swiss economy. It slowly gained momentum, and peaked in the year 2000 with 3.7% growth in real terms.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: In the early 2000s recession, being so closely linked to the economies of Western Europe and the United States, Switzerland could not escape the slowdown in these countries. After the worldwide stock market crashes in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, there were more announcements of false enterprise statistics and exaggerated managers' wages. The rate of GDP growth dropped to 1.2% in 2001; 0.4% in 2002; and minus 0.2% in 2003. This economic slowdown had a noticeable impact on the labour market.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: Many companies announced mass dismissals and thus the unemployment rate rose from its low of 1.6% in September 2000 to a peak of 4.3% in January 2004, although well below the European Union (EU) rate of 9.2% at the end of 2004.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: On 10 November 2002 the economics magazine "Cash" suggested five measures for political and economic institutions to implement to revive the Swiss economy:


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: 1. Private consumption should be promoted with decent wage increases. In addition to that, families with children should get discounts on their health insurance.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: 2. Switzerland's national bank should revive investments by lowering interest rates. Besides that, monetary institutions should increasingly credit consumers and offer cheaper land to be built on.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: 3. Switzerland's national bank was asked to devalue the Swiss Franc, especially compared to the Euro.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: 4. The government should implement the anti-cyclical measure of increasing budget deficits. Government spending should increase in the infrastructure and education sectors. Lowering taxes would make sense in order to promote private household consumption.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: These measures were applied with successful results while the government strove for the "Magical Hexagon" of full employment, social equality, economic growth, environmental quality, positive trade balance and price stability. The rebound which started in mid-2003 saw growth rate growth rate averaging 3% (2004 and 2005 saw a GDP growth of 2.5% and 2.6% respectively; for 2006 and 2007, the rate was 3.6%). In 2008, GDP growth was modest in the first half of the year while declining in the last two quarters. Because of the base effect, real growth came to 1.9%. While it contracted 1.9% in 2009, the economy started to pick up in Q3 and by the second quarter of 2010, it had surpassed its previous peak. Growth for 2010 was 2.6%


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: The stock market collapse of 2007-2009 deeply affected investment income earned abroad. This translated to a substantial fall in the surplus of the current account balance. In 2006, Switzerland recorded a 15.1% per GDP surplus. It went down to 9.1% in 2007 and further dropped to 1.8% in 2008. It recovered in 2009 and 2010 with a surplus of 11.9% and 14.6% respectively. Unemployment peaked in December 2009 at 4.4%. In August 2018 the unemployment rate was 2.4%.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: The following table shows the main economic indicators in 1980–2021 (with IMF staff estimtates in 2022–2027). Inflation below 5% is in green.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: The Swiss economy follows the typical developed country model with respect to the economic sectors. Only a small minority of the workers are involved in the primary or agricultural sector (1.3% of the population, ) while a larger minority is involved in the secondary or manufacturing sector (27.7% ). The majority of the working population are involved in the tertiary or services sector of the economy (71.0% ).


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: While most of the Swiss economic practices have been brought largely into conformity with the European Union's policies, some trade protectionism remains, particularly for the small agricultural sector.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: Switzerland is a leading exporter of high-end watches and clocks. Swiss companies produce most of the world's high-end watches: in 2011 exports reached nearly 19.3 billion CHF, up 19.2% over the previous year. Watch manufacturing is mostly located around the Jura mountains, in the cantons of Geneva, Vaud, Neuchâtel, Bern, and Jura. Notable watchmaking firms include Rolex, Patek Philippe, Swatch, and Richemont.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: In 2011, Switzerland led the world by exporting over US$20 billion value of all types of watches, followed by Hong Kong, at under US$10 billion. China exported the highest number of watches by far in 2011.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: Switzerland has an extensive industrial sector, with globally competitive companies in various industrial sectors. Most noticeably, food processing like Nestlé, machines and robot manufacturers such as ABB, Bobst SA and Stadler Rail, chemicals for industrial and construction use like Sika AG, or military equipment such as Ruag.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: Switzerland also has one of the most competitive pharmaceutical industries in the world. Major Swiss pharmaceutical companies include Novartis and Roche.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: Switzerland is highly protective of its agricultural industry. High tariffs and extensive domestic subsidisations encourage domestic production, which currently produces about 60% of the food consumed in the country.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Switzerland is subsidising more than 70% of its agriculture compared to 35% in the EU. The "2007 Agricultural Program" increased subsidies by CHF 63 million to CHF 14.092 billion.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: Protectionism acts to promote domestic production, but not to reduce prices or the cost of production, and there is no guarantee the increased domestic production is actually consumed internally; it may simply be exported, to the profit of the producers. 90 to 100% of potatoes, vegetables, pork, veal, cattle and most milk products are produced in the country. Beyond that, Swiss agriculture meets 65% of the domestic food demand. In 2016 the Swiss government spent about 5.5% of its total budget (over CHF 3.5 billion) on supporting food production.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: The first reform in agricultural policies was in 1993. Among other changes, since 1998 Switzerland has linked the attribution of farm subsidies with the strict observance of good environmental practice. Before farmers can apply for subsidies, they must obtain certificates of environmental management systems (EMS) proving that they: "make a balanced use of fertilizers; use at least 7% of their farmland as ecological compensation areas; regularly rotate crops; adopt appropriate measures to protect animals and soil; make limited and targeted use of pesticides." 1,500 farms are driven out of business each year. But the number of organic farms increased by 3.3 percent between 2003 and 2004, and organic sales increased by 7 percent to $979 million. Moreover, Swiss consumers consider less important the drawback of higher prices for organic food compared to conventional locally produced food.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: The CIA World Factbook estimates Switzerland's 2011 exports at $308.3 billion and the 2010 exports at $258.5 billion. Imports are estimated to be $299.6 billion in 2011 and $246.2 billion in 2010. According to the World Factbook numbers, Switzerland is the 20th largest exporter and the 18th largest importer.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: The United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database has lower numbers for Switzerland's exports and imports. The UN calculates exports at $223.5 billion in 2011 and $185.8 billion in 2010. The value of all imports in 2011 was $197.0 billion and in 2010 it was $166.9 billion.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: Switzerland's largest trading partner is Germany. In 2017, 17% of Switzerland's exports and 20% of its imports came from Germany. The United States was the second largest destination of exports (10% of total exports) and the second largest source of imports (7.8%). China was the third largest destination of exports (9.2%) but only provided 4.8% of imports.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: The next largest destinations of exports include India (7.3%), France (5.4%), Hong Kong (5.4%), the United Kingdom (4.5%) and Italy (4.4%). Other major sources of imports include: Italy (7.6%), the United Kingdom (7.1%), France (6.0%), China (mentioned above), the United Arab Emirates (3.7%) and Hong Kong (3.4%).


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: As a developed country with a skilled labor force, the majority of Swiss exports are precision or 'high tech' finished products. Switzerland's largest specific SITC categories of exports include medicaments (13%), heterocyclic compounds (2.2%), watches (6.4%), orthopaedic appliances (2.1%), and precious jewellery (2.5%). While watches and jewellery remained an important part of the economy, in 2017 about 24% of Swiss exports were gold bullion or coins. Agricultural products that Switzerland is famous for such as cheese (0.23%), wine (0.028%), and chocolate (0.35%) all make up only a small portion of Swiss exports. Switzerland is also a significant exporter of arms and ammunition, and the third largest for small calibers which accounted for 0.33% of the total exports in 2012.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: Switzerland's main imports include gold (21%), medicaments (7.4%), cars (4.0%), precious jewellery (3.7%), and other unclassified transactions (18%). While Switzerland has a long tradition of manufacturing cars, there are currently no large-scale assembly line automobile manufacturers in the country.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: Switzerland has highly developed tourism infrastructure, especially in the mountainous regions and cities, making it a good market for tourism-related equipment and services.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: 14% of hotels were in Grisons, 12% each in the Valais and Eastern Switzerland, 11% in Central Switzerland and 9% in the Bernese Oberland. The ratio of lodging nights in relation to resident population ("tourism intensity", a measure for the relative importance of tourism to local economy) was largest in Grisons (8.3) and Bernese Oberland (5.3), compared to a Swiss average of 1.3. 56.4% of lodging nights were by visitors from abroad (broken down by nationality: 16.5% Germany, 6.3% UK, 4.8% USA, 3.6% France, 3.0% Italy)


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: The total financial volume associated with tourism, including transportation, is estimated to CHF 35.5 billion (as of 2010) although some of this comes from fuel tax and sales of motorway vignettes. The total gross value added from tourism is 14.9 billion. Tourism provides a total of 144,838 full time equivalent jobs in the entire country. The total financial volume of tourist lodging is 5.19 billion CHF and eating at the lodging provides an additional 5.19 billion. The total gross value added of 14.9 billion is about 2.9% of Switzerland's 2010 nominal GDP of 550.57 billion CHF.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: In 2003, the financial sector comprised an estimated 11.6% of Switzerland's GDP and employed approximately 196,000 people (136,000 of whom work in the banking sector); this represents about 5.6% of the total Swiss workforce.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: Swiss neutrality and national sovereignty, long recognized by foreign nations, have fostered a stable environment in which the banking sector was able to develop and thrive. Switzerland has maintained neutrality through both World Wars, is not a member of the European Union, and was not even a member of the United Nations until 2002. Currently an estimated 28 percent of all funds held outside the country of origin (sometimes called "offshore" funds) are kept in Switzerland. In 2009 Swiss banks managed 5.4 trillion Swiss Francs.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: Most of the financial sector is centred in Zurich and Geneva. Zurich specialises in banking (UBS, Credit Suisse, Julius Baer) as well as insurance (Swiss Re, Zurich insurance), whilst Geneva specialises in wealth management (Pictet Group, Lombard Odier, Union Bancaire Privée), and commodity trading, trade finance, and shipping (Cargill, Mediterranean Shipping Company, Louis Dreyfus Company, Mercuria Energy Group, Trafigura, Banque de Commerce et de Placements).


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: The Bank of International Settlements, an organization that facilitates cooperation among the world's central banks, is headquartered in the city of Basel. Founded in 1930, the BIS chose to locate in Switzerland because of the country's neutrality, which was important to an organization founded by countries that had been on both sides of World War I. In May 2006, foreign banks operating in Switzerland managed 870 billion Swiss francs worth of assets. In 2014, this number was estimated to be 960 billion Swiss francs.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: Swiss banks have served as safe havens for the wealth of dictators, despots, mobsters, arms dealers, corrupt officials, and tax cheats of all kinds.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: Switzerland is a major hub for commodities trading, globally. Commodities trading represents 4% of Swiss GDP (2022). The range of products traded either physically or financially include agriculture, minerals, metals and oil/energy. Some 40% of all oil shipments are traded through Switzerland, along with 60% of metals and grains (2022).


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: 10,000 persons work in the commodity trade business in Switzerland (& 35,000 indirectly). Mostly around Lake Geneva, Zug and Lugano.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: Corporate loans and revolving credit facilities granted to the five main Swiss energy trading houses (Glencore, Mercuria, Gunvor, Vitol and Trafigura) between 2013 and 2019 exceeded $360 billion.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: Switzerland is also a major hub for gold trading with some of the largest refiners including Valcambi, PAMP/MKS, Argor-Heraeus and Metalor.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: Agricultural commodities trading is dominated by ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus. Shipping firm MSC, logistics company Kühne + Nagel and Danzas and quality control firm SGS S.A. are also major players in this sector.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: This situation has enabled some types of organization in commodities trading to be involved in corruption and exploitation and operate with little or no transparency or oversight.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: The Swiss economy is characterised by a skilled and generally 'peaceful' workforce. One quarter of the country's full-time workers are unionised. Labour and management relations are amicable, characterised by a willingness to settle disputes instead of resorting to labour action. They take place between trade unions and branch associations, that are themselves often grouped in Union of Employers, like the Fédération patronale vaudoise or the Fédération des Entreprises Romandes Genève. About 600 collective bargaining agreements exist today in Switzerland and are regularly renewed without major problems. However, there is no country-wide minimum wage across sectors, but some collective bargaining agreement may contain minimum wage requirements for specific sectors or employers. A May 2014 ballot initiative which would have required a Swiss minimum wage to 22 Swiss francs an hour (corresponding to a monthly income of about 4000 Swiss francs) failed to pass, gaining only 23.7% support on the ballot.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: On 27 September 2020 voters in the Canton of Geneva approved a minimum wage of 23 Swiss franc per hour or about 4,000 per month.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: With the peak of the number of bankruptcies in 2003, however, the mood was pessimistic. Massive layoffs and dismissals by enterprises resulting from the global economic slowdown, major management scandals and different foreign investment attitudes have strained the traditional Swiss labour peace. Swiss trade unions have encouraged strikes against several companies, including Swiss International Air Lines, Coca-Cola, and Orange. Total days lost to strikes, however, remain among the lowest in the OECD.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: A study estimated that Switzerland will have a short fall of hundreds of thousands of workers by 2030.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: In 2013 the mean household income in Switzerland was CHF 120,624 (c. USD 134,000 nominal, US$101,000 PPP), the mean household income after social security, taxes and mandatory health insurance was CHF 85,560 (c. USD 95,000 nominal, US$72,000 PPP).


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: As of 2016, Switzerland had the highest average wealth per adult, at $561,900. The top 1% richest persons own 35% of all the wealth (2015).


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: This development was tied to the exchange rate between the US Dollar and the Swiss franc, which caused capital in Swiss francs to more than double its value in dollar terms during the 2000s and especially in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007–2008, without any direct increase in value in terms of domestic purchasing power.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: The high average wealth is determined by the few who are extremely wealthy; the median (50th percentile) wealth of a Swiss adult is five times lower than the average, at US$100,900 (US$70,000 PPP as of 2011).


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: The Statistical Office defines the majority of the population as “neither rich nor poor and the average Swiss earns just enough to afford the high cost of living in Switzerland”.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: As of 2022, one in seven Swiss pensioners was living in poverty. Some 46,000 Swiss pensioners have already fallen into poverty and a further 295,000 are in danger of joining them. The official poverty line is drawn at CHF2,279 ($2,300) per month to pay for rent, health insurance, clothes and food.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: About 8.2% of the population live below the national poverty line, defined in Switzerland as earning less than CHF3,990 per month for a household of two adults and two children, and a further 15% are at risk of poverty.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: Through the United States-Swiss Joint Economic Commission (JEC), Switzerland has passed strict legislation covering anti-terrorism financing and the prevention of terrorist acts, marked by the implementation of several anti-money laundering procedures and the seizure of al-Qaeda accounts.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: Apart from agriculture, there are minimal economic and trade barriers between the European Union and Switzerland. In the wake of the Swiss voters' rejection of the European Economic Area Agreement in 1992, the Swiss Government set its sights on negotiating bilateral economic agreements with the EU. Four years of negotiations culminated in "Bilaterals", a cross-platform agreement covering seven sectors: research, public procurement, technical barriers to trade, agriculture, civil aviation, land transport, and the free movement of persons. Parliament officially endorsed the Bilaterals in 1999 and it was approved by general referendum in May 2000. The agreements, which were then ratified by the European Parliament and the legislatures of its member states, entered into force on June 1, 2002. The Swiss government has since embarked on a second round of negotiations, called the "Bilaterals II", which will further strengthen the country's economic ties with the organisation.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: Switzerland has since brought most of their practices into conformity with European Union policies and norms in order to maximise the country's international competitiveness. While most of the EU policies are not contentious, police and judicial cooperation to international law enforcement and the taxation of savings are controversial, mainly because of possible side effects on bank secrecy.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: Swiss and EU finance ministers agreed in June 2003 that Swiss banks would levy a withholding tax on EU citizens' savings income. The tax would increase gradually to 35% by 2011, with 75% of the funds being transferred to the EU. Recent estimates value EU capital inflows to Switzerland to $8.3 billion.


title: Economy of Switzerland

text: Switzerland is a member of a number of international economic organizations, including the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.


title: Airline

text: An airline is a company that provides air transport services for traveling passengers and freight. Airlines use aircraft to supply these services and may form partnerships or alliances with other airlines for codeshare agreements, in which they both offer and operate the same flight. Generally, airline companies are recognized with an air operating certificate or license issued by a governmental aviation body. Airlines may be scheduled or charter operators.


title: Airline

text: The first airline was the German airship company DELAG, founded on November 16, 1909. The four oldest non-airship airlines that still exist are the Netherlands' KLM (1919), Colombia's Avianca (1919), Australia's Qantas (1920) and the Czech Republic's Czech Airlines (1923).


title: Airline

text: Airline ownership has seen a shift from mostly personal ownership until the 1930s to government-ownership of major airlines from the 1940s to 1980s and back to large-scale privatization following the mid-1980s. Since the 1980s, there has also been a trend of major airline mergers and the formation of airline alliances. The largest alliances are Star Alliance, SkyTeam and Oneworld, and these three collectively account for more than 60% of global commercial air traffic in 2015. Airline alliances coordinate their passenger service programs (such as lounges and frequent-flyer programs), offer special interline tickets and often engage in extensive codesharing (sometimes systemwide).


title: Airline

text: , the largest airline by passengers carried and fleet size was the American Airlines Group, while Delta Air Lines was the largest by revenue. Lufthansa Group was the largest by number of employees, FedEx Express by freight ton-kilometers, Turkish Airlines by number of countries served and UPS Airlines by number of destinations served (though United Airlines was the largest passenger airline by number of destinations served).


title: Airline

text: DELAG, "Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-Aktiengesellschaft I" was the world's first airline. It was founded on November 16, 1909, with government assistance, and operated airships manufactured by The Zeppelin Corporation. Its headquarters were in Frankfurt. The first fixed-wing scheduled airline was started on January 1, 1914, from St. Petersburg, Florida, to Tampa, Florida, operated by the St. Petersburg–Tampa Airboat Line. The four oldest non-dirigible airlines that still exist are the Netherlands' KLM (1919), Colombia's Avianca (1919), Australia's Qantas (1921), and the Czech Republic's Czech Airlines (1923).


title: Airline

text: The earliest fixed wing airline in Europe was Aircraft Transport and Travel, formed by George Holt Thomas in 1916; via a series of takeovers and mergers, this company is an ancestor of modern-day British Airways. Using a fleet of former military Airco DH.4A biplanes that had been modified to carry two passengers in the fuselage, it operated relief flights between Folkestone and Ghent. On July 15 , 1919, the company flew a proving flight across the English Channel, despite a lack of support from the British government. Flown by Lt. H Shaw in an Airco DH.9 between RAF Hendon and Paris – Le Bourget Airport, the flight took 2 hours and 30 minutes at £21 per passenger.


title: Airline

text: On August 25, 1919, the company used DH.16s to pioneer a regular service from Hounslow Heath Aerodrome to Le Bourget, the first regular international service in the world. The airline soon gained a reputation for reliability, despite problems with bad weather, and began to attract European competition. In November 1919, it won the first British civil airmail contract. Six Royal Air Force Airco DH.9A aircraft were lent to the company, to operate the airmail service between Hawkinge and Cologne. In 1920, they were returned to the Royal Air Force.


title: Airline

text: Other British competitors were quick to follow – Handley Page Transport was established in 1919 and used the company's converted wartime Type O/400 bombers with a capacity for 12 passengers, to run a London-Paris passenger service.


title: Airline

text: The first French airline was Société des lignes Latécoère, later known as Aéropostale, which started its first service in late 1918 to Spain. The Société Générale des Transports Aériens was created in late 1919, by the Farman brothers and the Farman F.60 Goliath plane flew scheduled services from Toussus-le-Noble to Kenley, near Croydon, England. Another early French airline was the Compagnie des Messageries Aériennes, established in 1919 by Louis-Charles Breguet, offering a mail and freight service between Le Bourget Airport, Paris and Lesquin Airport, Lille.


title: Airline

text: The first German airline to use heavier than air aircraft was Deutsche Luft-Reederei established in 1917 which started operating in February 1919. In its first year, the D.L.R. operated regularly scheduled flights on routes with a combined length of nearly 1000 miles. By 1921 the D.L.R. network was more than 3000 km (1865 miles) long, and included destinations in the Netherlands, Scandinavia and the Baltic Republics. Another important German airline was Junkers Luftverkehr, which began operations in 1921. It was a division of the aircraft manufacturer Junkers, which became a separate company in 1924. It operated joint-venture airlines in Austria, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Norway, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland.


title: Airline

text: The Dutch airline KLM made its first flight in 1920, and is the oldest continuously operating airline in the world. Established by aviator Albert Plesman, it was immediately awarded a "Royal" predicate from Queen Wilhelmina. Its first flight was from Croydon Airport, London to Amsterdam, using a leased Aircraft Transport and Travel DH-16, and carrying two British journalists and a number of newspapers. In 1921, KLM started scheduled services.


title: Airline

text: In Finland, the charter establishing Aero O/Y (now Finnair) was signed in the city of Helsinki on 12 September 1923. Junkers F.13 D-335 became the first aircraft of the company, when Aero took delivery of it on 14 March 1924. The first flight was between Helsinki and Tallinn, capital of Estonia, and it took place on 20 March 1924, one week later.


title: Airline

text: In the Soviet Union, the Chief Administration of the Civil Air Fleet was established in 1921. One of its first acts was to help found Deutsch-Russische Luftverkehrs A.G. (Deruluft), a German-Russian joint venture to provide air transport from Russia to the West. Domestic air service began around the same time, when Dobrolyot started operations on 15 July 1923 between Moscow and Nizhni Novgorod. Since 1932 all operations had been carried under the name Aeroflot.


title: Airline

text: Early European airlines tended to favor comfort – the passenger cabins were often spacious with luxurious interiors – over speed and efficiency. The relatively basic navigational capabilities of pilots at the time also meant that delays due to the weather were commonplace.


title: Airline

text: By the early 1920s, small airlines were struggling to compete, and there was a movement towards increased rationalization and consolidation. In 1924, Imperial Airways was formed from the merger of Instone Air Line Company, British Marine Air Navigation, Daimler Airway and Handley Page Transport, to allow British airlines to compete with stiff competition from French and German airlines that were enjoying heavy government subsidies. The airline was a pioneer in surveying and opening up air routes across the world to serve far-flung parts of the British Empire and to enhance trade and integration.


title: Airline

text: The first new airliner ordered by Imperial Airways, was the Handley Page W8f "City of Washington", delivered on 3 November 1924. In the first year of operation the company carried 11,395 passengers and 212,380 letters. In April 1925, the film "The Lost World" became the first film to be screened for passengers on a scheduled airliner flight when it was shown on the London-Paris route.


title: Airline

text: Two French airlines also merged to form Air Union on 1 January 1923. This later merged with four other French airlines to become Air France, the country's flagship carrier to this day, on 17 May 1933.


title: Airline

text: Germany's Deutsche Lufthansa was created in 1926 by merger of two airlines, one of them Junkers Luftverkehr. Lufthansa, due to the Junkers heritage and unlike most other airlines at the time, became a major investor in airlines outside of Europe, providing capital to Varig and Avianca. German airliners built by Junkers, Dornier, and Fokker were among the most advanced in the world at the time.


title: Airline

text: In 1926, Alan Cobham surveyed a flight route from the UK to Cape Town, South Africa, following this up with another proving flight to Melbourne, Australia. Other routes to British India and the Far East were also charted and demonstrated at this time. Regular services to Cairo and Basra began in 1927 and were extended to Karachi in 1929. The London-Australia service was inaugurated in 1932 with the Handley Page HP 42 airliners. Further services were opened up to Calcutta, Rangoon, Singapore, Brisbane and Hong Kong passengers departed London on 14 March 1936 following the establishment of a branch from Penang to Hong Kong.


title: Airline

text: Like Imperial Airways, Air France and KLM's early growth depended heavily on the needs to service links with far-flung colonial possessions (North Africa and Indochina for the French and the East Indies for the Dutch). France began an air mail service to Morocco in 1919 that was bought out in 1927, renamed Aéropostale, and injected with capital to become a major international carrier. In 1933, Aéropostale went bankrupt, was nationalized and merged into Air France.


title: Airline

text: Although Germany lacked colonies, it also began expanding its services globally. In 1931, the airship Graf Zeppelin began offering regular scheduled passenger service between Germany and South America, usually every two weeks, which continued until 1937. In 1936, the airship Hindenburg entered passenger service and successfully crossed the Atlantic 36 times before crashing at Lakehurst, New Jersey, on 6 May 1937. In 1938, a weekly air service from Berlin to Kabul, Afghanistan, started operating.


title: Airline

text: From February 1934 until World War II began in 1939, Deutsche Lufthansa operated an airmail service from Stuttgart, Germany via Spain, the Canary Islands and West Africa to Natal in Brazil. This was the first time an airline flew across an ocean.


title: Airline

text: By the end of the 1930s Aeroflot had become the world's largest airline, employing more than 4,000 pilots and 60,000 other service personnel and operating around 3,000 aircraft (of which 75% were considered obsolete by its own standards). During the Soviet era Aeroflot was synonymous with Russian civil aviation, as it was the only air carrier. It became the first airline in the world to operate sustained regular jet services on 15 September 1956 with the Tupolev Tu-104.


title: Airline

text: Deregulation of the European Union airspace in the early 1990s has had substantial effect on the structure of the industry there. The shift towards 'budget' airlines on shorter routes has been significant. Airlines such as EasyJet and Ryanair have often grown at the expense of the traditional national airlines.


title: Airline

text: There has also been a trend for these national airlines themselves to be privatized such as has occurred for Aer Lingus and British Airways. Other national airlines, including Italy's Alitalia, suffered – particularly with the rapid increase of oil prices in early 2008.


title: Airline

text: Finnair, the largest airline of Finland, had no fatal or hull-loss accidents since 1963, and is recognized for its safety.


title: Airline

text: Tony Jannus conducted the United States' first scheduled commercial airline flight on January 1, 1914 for the St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line. The 23-minute flight traveled between St. Petersburg, Florida and Tampa, Florida, passing some above Tampa Bay in Jannus' Benoist XIV wood and muslin biplane flying boat. His passenger was a former mayor of St. Petersburg, who paid $400 for the privilege of sitting on a wooden bench in the open cockpit. The Airboat line operated for about four months, carrying more than 1,200 passengers who paid $5 each. Chalk's International Airlines began service between Miami and Bimini in the Bahamas in February 1919. Based in Ft. Lauderdale, Chalk's claimed to be the oldest continuously operating airline in the United States until its closure in 2008.


title: Airline

text: Following World War I, the United States found itself swamped with aviators. Many decided to take their war-surplus aircraft on barnstorming campaigns, performing aerobatic maneuvers to woo crowds. In 1918, the United States Postal Service won the financial backing of Congress to begin experimenting with air mail service, initially using Curtiss Jenny aircraft that had been procured by the United States Army Air Service. Private operators were the first to fly the mail but due to numerous accidents the US Army was tasked with mail delivery. During the Army's involvement they proved to be too unreliable and lost their air mail duties. By the mid-1920s, the Postal Service had developed its own air mail network, based on a transcontinental backbone between New York City and San Francisco. To supplement this service, they offered twelve contracts for spur routes to independent bidders. Some of the carriers that won these routes would, through time and mergers, evolve into Pan Am, Delta Air Lines, Braniff Airways, American Airlines, United Airlines (originally a division of Boeing), Trans World Airlines, Northwest Airlines, and Eastern Air Lines.


title: Airline

text: Service during the early 1920s was sporadic: most airlines at the time were focused on carrying bags of mail. In 1925, however, the Ford Motor Company bought out the Stout Aircraft Company and began construction of the all-metal Ford Trimotor, which became the first successful American airliner. With a 12-passenger capacity, the Trimotor made passenger service potentially profitable. Air service was seen as a supplement to rail service in the American transportation network.


title: Airline

text: At the same time, Juan Trippe began a crusade to create an air network that would link America to the world, and he achieved this goal through his airline, Pan Am, with a fleet of flying boats that linked Los Angeles to Shanghai and Boston to London. Pan Am and Northwest Airways (which began flights to Canada in the 1920s) were the only U.S. airlines to go international before the 1940s.


title: Airline

text: With the introduction of the Boeing 247 and Douglas DC-3 in the 1930s, the U.S. airline industry was generally profitable, even during the Great Depression. This trend continued until the beginning of World War II.


title: Airline

text: World War II, like World War I, brought new life to the airline industry. Many airlines in the Allied countries were flush from lease contracts to the military, and foresaw a future explosive demand for civil air transport, for both passengers and cargo. They were eager to invest in the newly emerging flagships of air travel such as the Boeing Stratocruiser, Lockheed Constellation, and Douglas DC-6. Most of these new aircraft were based on American bombers such as the B-29, which had spearheaded research into new technologies such as pressurization. Most offered increased efficiency from both added speed and greater payload.


title: Airline

text: In the 1950s, the De Havilland Comet, Boeing 707, Douglas DC-8, and Sud Aviation Caravelle became the first flagships of the Jet Age in the West, while the Eastern bloc had Tupolev Tu-104 and Tupolev Tu-124 in the fleets of state-owned carriers such as Czechoslovak ČSA, Soviet Aeroflot and East-German Interflug. The Vickers Viscount and Lockheed L-188 Electra inaugurated turboprop transport.


title: Airline

text: On 4 October 1958, British Overseas Airways Corporation started transatlantic flights between London Heathrow and New York Idlewild with a Comet 4, and Pan Am followed on 26 October with a Boeing 707 service between New York and Paris.


title: Airline

text: The next big boost for the airlines would come in the 1970s, when the Boeing 747, McDonnell Douglas DC-10, and Lockheed L-1011 inaugurated widebody ("jumbo jet") service, which is still the standard in international travel. The Tupolev Tu-144 and its Western counterpart, Concorde, made supersonic travel a reality. Concorde first flew in 1969 and operated through 2003. In 1972, Airbus began producing Europe's most commercially successful line of airliners to date. The added efficiencies for these aircraft were often not in speed, but in passenger capacity, payload, and range. Airbus also features modern electronic cockpits that were common across their aircraft to enable pilots to fly multiple models with minimal cross-training.


title: Airline

text: The 1978 U.S. airline industry deregulation lowered federally controlled barriers for new airlines just as a downturn in the nation's economy occurred. New start-ups entered during the downturn, during which time they found aircraft and funding, contracted hangar and maintenance services, trained new employees, and recruited laid-off staff from other airlines.


title: Airline

text: Major airlines dominated their routes through aggressive pricing and additional capacity offerings, often swamping new start-ups. In the place of high barriers to entry imposed by regulation, the major airlines implemented an equally high barrier called loss leader pricing. In this strategy an already established and dominant airline stomps out its competition by lowering airfares on specific routes, below the cost of operating on it, choking out any chance a start-up airline may have. The industry side effect is an overall drop in revenue and service quality. Since deregulation in 1978 the average domestic ticket price has dropped by 40%. So has airline employee pay. By incurring massive losses, the airlines of the USA now rely upon a scourge of cyclical Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings to continue doing business. America West Airlines (which has since merged with US Airways) remained a significant survivor from this new entrant era, as dozens, even hundreds, have gone under.


title: Airline

text: In many ways, the biggest winner in the deregulated environment was the air passenger. Although not exclusively attributable to deregulation, indeed the U.S. witnessed an explosive growth in demand for air travel. Many millions who had never or rarely flown before became regular fliers, even joining frequent flyer loyalty programs and receiving free flights and other benefits from their flying. New services and higher frequencies meant that business fliers could fly to another city, do business, and return the same day, from almost any point in the country. Air travel's advantages put long-distance intercity railroad travel and bus lines under pressure, with most of the latter having withered away, whilst the former is still protected under nationalization through the continuing existence of Amtrak.


title: Airline

text: By the 1980s, almost half of the total flying in the world took place in the U.S., and today the domestic industry operates over 10,000 daily departures nationwide.


title: Airline

text: Toward the end of the century, a new style of low cost airline emerged, offering a no-frills product at a lower price. Southwest Airlines, JetBlue, AirTran Airways, Skybus Airlines and other low-cost carriers began to represent a serious challenge to the so-called "legacy airlines", as did their low-cost counterparts in many other countries. Their commercial viability represented a serious competitive threat to the legacy carriers. However, of these, ATA and Skybus have since ceased operations.


title: Airline

text: Increasingly since 1978, US airlines have been reincorporated and spun off by newly created and internally led management companies, and thus becoming nothing more than operating units and subsidiaries with limited financially decisive control. Among some of these holding companies and parent companies which are relatively well known, are the UAL Corporation, along with the AMR Corporation, among a long list of airline holding companies sometime recognized worldwide. Less recognized are the private-equity firms which often seize managerial, financial, and board of directors control of distressed airline companies by temporarily investing large sums of capital in air carriers, to rescheme an airlines assets into a profitable organization or liquidating an air carrier of their profitable and worthwhile routes and business operations.


title: Airline

text: Thus the last 50 years of the airline industry have varied from reasonably profitable, to devastatingly depressed. As the first major market to deregulate the industry in 1978, U.S. airlines have experienced more turbulence than almost any other country or region. In fact, no U.S. legacy carrier survived bankruptcy-free. Among the outspoken critics of deregulation, former CEO of American Airlines, Robert Crandall has publicly stated: "Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing shows airline industry deregulation was a mistake."


title: Airline

text: Congress passed the Air Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act (P.L. 107–42) in response to a severe liquidity crisis facing the already-troubled airline industry in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Through the ATSB Congress sought to provide cash infusions to carriers for both the cost of the four-day federal shutdown of the airlines and the incremental losses incurred through December 31, 2001, as a result of the terrorist attacks. This resulted in the first government bailout of the 21st century. Between 2000 and 2005 US airlines lost $30 billion with wage cuts of over $15 billion and 100,000 employees laid off.


title: Airline

text: In recognition of the essential national economic role of a healthy aviation system, Congress authorized partial compensation of up to $5 billion in cash subject to review by the U.S. Department of Transportation and up to $10 billion in loan guarantees subject to review by a newly created Air Transportation Stabilization Board (ATSB). The applications to DOT for reimbursements were subjected to rigorous multi-year reviews not only by DOT program personnel but also by the Government Accountability Office and the DOT Inspector General.


title: Airline

text: Ultimately, the federal government provided $4.6 billion in one-time, subject-to-income-tax cash payments to 427 U.S. air carriers, with no provision for repayment, essentially a gift from the taxpayers. (Passenger carriers operating scheduled service received approximately $4 billion, subject to tax.) In addition, the ATSB approved loan guarantees to six airlines totaling approximately $1.6 billion. Data from the U.S. Treasury Department show that the government recouped the $1.6 billion and a profit of $339 million from the fees, interest and purchase of discounted airline stock associated with loan guarantees.


title: Airline

text: Although Philippine Airlines (PAL) was officially founded on February 26, 1941, its license to operate as an airliner was derived from merged Philippine Aerial Taxi Company (PATCO) established by mining magnate Emmanuel N. Bachrach on 3 December 1930, making it Asia's oldest scheduled carrier still in operation. Commercial air service commenced three weeks later from Manila to Baguio, making it Asia's first airline route. Bachrach's death in 1937 paved the way for its eventual merger with Philippine Airlines in March 1941 and made it Asia's oldest airline. It is also the oldest airline in Asia still operating under its current name. Bachrach's majority share in PATCO was bought by beer magnate Andres R. Soriano in 1939 upon the advice of General Douglas MacArthur and later merged with newly formed Philippine Airlines with PAL as the surviving entity. Soriano has controlling interest in both airlines before the merger. PAL restarted service on 15 March 1941, with a single Beech Model 18 NPC-54 aircraft, which started its daily services between Manila (from Nielson Field) and Baguio, later to expand with larger aircraft such as the DC-3 and Vickers Viscount.


title: Airline

text: Cathay Pacific was one of the first airlines to be launched among the other Asian countries in 1946 along with Asiana Airlines, which later joined in 1988. The license to operate as an airliner was granted by the federal government body after reviewing the necessity at the national assembly. The Hanjin occupies the largest ownership of Korean Air as well as few low-budget airlines as of now. Korean Air is one of the four founders of SkyTeam, which was established in 2000. Asiana Airlines joined Star Alliance in 2003. Korean Air and Asiana Airlines comprise one of the largest combined airline miles and number of passenger served at the regional market of Asian airline industry


title: Airline

text: India was also one of the first countries to embrace civil aviation. One of the first Asian airline companies was Air India, which was founded as Tata Airlines in 1932, a division of Tata Sons Ltd. (now Tata Group). The airline was founded by India's leading industrialist, JRD Tata. On 15 October 1932, J. R. D. Tata himself flew a single engined De Havilland Puss Moth carrying air mail (postal mail of Imperial Airways) from Karachi to Bombay via Ahmedabad. The aircraft continued to Madras via Bellary piloted by Royal Air Force pilot Nevill Vintcent. Tata Airlines was also one of the world's first major airlines which began its operations without any support from the Government.


title: Airline

text: With the outbreak of World War II, the airline presence in Asia came to a relative halt, with many new flag carriers donating their aircraft for military aid and other uses. Following the end of the war in 1945, regular commercial service was restored in India and Tata Airlines became a public limited company on 29 July 1946, under the name Air India. After the independence of India, 49% of the airline was acquired by the Government of India. In return, the airline was granted status to operate international services from India as the designated flag carrier under the name Air India International.


title: Airline

text: On 31 July 1946, a chartered Philippine Airlines (PAL) DC-4 ferried 40 American servicemen to Oakland, California, from Nielson Airport in Makati with stops in Guam, Wake Island, Johnston Atoll and Honolulu, Hawaii, making PAL the first Asian airline to cross the Pacific Ocean. A regular service between Manila and San Francisco was started in December. It was during this year that the airline was designated as the flag carrier of Philippines.


title: Airline

text: During the era of decolonization, newly born Asian countries started to embrace air transport. Among the first Asian carriers during the era were Cathay Pacific of Hong Kong (founded in September 1946), Orient Airways (later Pakistan International Airlines; founded in October 1946), Air Ceylon (later SriLankan Airlines; founded in 1947), Malayan Airways Limited in 1947 (later Singapore and Malaysia Airlines), El Al in Israel in 1948, Garuda Indonesia in 1949, Japan Airlines in 1951, Thai Airways in 1960, and Korean National Airlines in 1947.


title: Airline

text: Among the first countries to have regular airlines in Latin America and the Caribbean were Bolivia with Lloyd Aéreo Boliviano, Cuba with Cubana de Aviación, Colombia with Avianca (the first airline established in the Americas), Argentina with Aerolíneas Argentinas, Chile with LAN Chile (today LATAM Airlines), Brazil with Varig, the Dominican Republic with Dominicana de Aviación, Mexico with Mexicana de Aviación, Trinidad and Tobago with BWIA West Indies Airways (today Caribbean Airlines), Venezuela with Aeropostal, Puerto Rico with Puertorriquena; and TACA based in El Salvador and representing several airlines of Central America (Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua). All the previous airlines started regular operations well before World War II. Puerto Rican commercial airlines such as Prinair, Oceanair, Fina Air and Vieques Air Link came much after the second world war, as did several others from other countries like Mexico's Interjet and Volaris, Venezuela's Aserca Airlines and others.


title: Airline

text: The air travel market has evolved rapidly over recent years in Latin America. Some industry estimates indicate that over 2,000 new aircraft will begin service over the next five years in this region.


title: Airline

text: These airlines serve domestic flights within their countries, as well as connections within Latin America and also overseas flights to North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia.


title: Airline

text: Only five airline groups – Avianca, Panama's Copa, Mexico's Volaris, the Irelandia group and LATAM Airlines – have international subsidiaries and cover many destinations within the Americas as well as major hubs in other continents. LATAM with Chile as the central operation along with Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil and Argentina and formerly with some operations in the Dominican Republic. The Avianca group has its main operation in Colombia based around the hub in Bogotá, Colombia, as well as subsidiaries in various Latin American countries with hubs in San Salvador, El Salvador, as well as Lima, Peru, with a smaller operation in Ecuador. Copa has subsidiaries Copa Airlines Colombia and Wingo, both in Colombia, while Volaris of Mexico has Volaris Costa Rica and Volaris El Salvador, and the Irelandia group formerly included Viva Aerobus of Mexico; it now includes Viva Colombia and Viva Air Peru.


title: Airline

text: Many countries have national airlines that the government owns and operates. Fully private airlines are subject to much government regulation for economic, political, and safety concerns. For instance, governments often intervene to halt airline labor actions to protect the free flow of people, communications, and goods between different regions without compromising safety.


title: Airline

text: The United States, Australia, and to a lesser extent Brazil, Mexico, India, the United Kingdom, and Japan have "deregulated" their airlines. In the past, these governments dictated airfares, route networks, and other operational requirements for each airline. Since deregulation, airlines have been largely free to negotiate their own operating arrangements with different airports, enter and exit routes easily, and to levy airfares and supply flights according to market demand. The entry barriers for new airlines are lower in a deregulated market, and so the U.S. has seen hundreds of airlines start up (sometimes for only a brief operating period). This has produced far greater competition than before deregulation in most markets. The added competition, together with pricing freedom, means that new entrants often take market share with highly reduced rates that, to a limited degree, full service airlines must match. This is a major constraint on profitability for established carriers, which tend to have a higher cost base.


title: Airline

text: As a result, profitability in a deregulated market is uneven for most airlines. These forces have caused some major airlines to go out of business, in addition to most of the poorly established new entrants.


title: Airline

text: In the United States, the airline industry is dominated by four large firms. Because of industry consolidation, after fuel prices dropped considerably in 2015, very little of the savings were passed on to consumers.


title: Airline

text: Groups such as the International Civil Aviation Organization establish worldwide standards for safety and other vital concerns. Most international air traffic is regulated by bilateral agreements between countries, which designate specific carriers to operate on specific routes. The model of such an agreement was the Bermuda Agreement between the US and UK following World War II, which designated airports to be used for transatlantic flights and gave each government the authority to nominate carriers to operate routes.


title: Airline

text: Bilateral agreements are based on the "freedoms of the air", a group of generalized traffic rights ranging from the freedom to overfly a country to the freedom to provide domestic flights within a country (a very rarely granted right known as cabotage). Most agreements permit airlines to fly from their home country to designated airports in the other country: some also extend the freedom to provide continuing service to a third country, or to another destination in the other country while carrying passengers from overseas.


title: Airline

text: In the 1990s, "open skies" agreements became more common. These agreements take many of these regulatory powers from state governments and open up international routes to further competition. Open skies agreements have met some criticism, particularly within the European Union, whose airlines would be at a comparative disadvantage with the United States' because of cabotage restrictions.


title: Airline

text: In 2017, 4.1 billion passengers have been carried by airlines in 41.9 million commercial scheduled flights (an average payload of 4100/41.9round0 passengers), for 7.75 trillion passenger kilometres (an average trip of 7750/4.100round0 km) over 45,091 airline routes served globally. In 2016, air transport generated $704.4 billion of revenue in 2016, employed 10.2 million workers, supported 65.5 million jobs and $2.7 trillion of economic activity: 3.6% of the global GDP.


title: Airline

text: In July 2016, the total weekly airline capacity was 181.1 billion Available Seat Kilometers (+6.9% compared to July 2015): 57.6bn in Asia-Pacific, 47.7bn in Europe, 46.2bn in North America, 12.2bn in Middle East, 12.0bn in Latin America and 5.4bn in Africa.


title: Airline

text: Airlines have substantial fixed and operating costs to establish and maintain air services: labor, fuel, airplanes, engines, spares and parts, IT services and networks, airport equipment, airport handling services, booking commissions, advertising, catering, training, aviation insurance and other costs. Thus all but a small percentage of the income from ticket sales is paid out to a wide variety of external providers or internal cost centers.


title: Airline

text: Moreover, the industry is structured so that airlines often act as tax collectors. Airline fuel is untaxed because of a series of treaties existing between countries. Ticket prices include a number of fees, taxes and surcharges beyond the control of airlines. Airlines are also responsible for enforcing government regulations. If airlines carry passengers without proper documentation on an international flight, they are responsible for returning them back to the original country.


title: Airline

text: Analysis of the 1992–1996 period shows that every player in the air transport chain is far more profitable than the airlines, who collect and pass through fees and revenues to them from ticket sales. While airlines as a whole earned 6% return on capital employed (2–3.5% less than the cost of capital), airports earned 10%, catering companies 10–13%, handling companies 11–14%, aircraft lessors 15%, aircraft manufacturers 16%, and global distribution companies more than 30%.


title: Airline

text: There has been continuing cost competition from low cost airlines. Many companies emulate Southwest Airlines in various respects. The lines between full-service and low-cost airlines have become blurred – e.g., with most "full service" airlines introducing baggage check fees despite Southwest not doing so.


title: Airline

text: Many airlines in the U.S. and elsewhere have experienced business difficulty. U.S. airlines that have declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy since 1990 have included American Airlines, Continental Airlines (twice), Delta Air Lines, Northwest Airlines, Pan Am, United Airlines and US Airways (twice).


title: Airline

text: Where an airline has established an engineering base at an airport, then there may be considerable economic advantages in using that same airport as a preferred focus (or "hub") for its scheduled flights.


title: Airline

text: Fuel hedging is a contractual tool used by transportation companies like airlines to reduce their exposure to volatile and potentially rising fuel costs. Several low-cost carriers such as Southwest Airlines adopt this practice. Southwest is credited with maintaining strong business profits between 1999 and the early 2000s due to its fuel hedging policy. Many other airlines are replicating Southwest's hedging policy to control their fuel costs.


title: Airline

text: Operating costs for US major airlines are primarily aircraft operating expense including jet fuel, aircraft maintenance, depreciation and aircrew for 44%, servicing expense for 29% (traffic 11%, passenger 11% and aircraft 7%), 14% for reservations and sales and 13% for overheads (administration 6% and advertising 2%). An average US major Boeing 757-200 flies stages 11.3 block hours per day and costs $2,550 per block hour: $923 of ownership, $590 of maintenance, $548 of fuel and $489 of crew; or $13.34 per 186 seats per block hour. For a Boeing 737-500, a low-cost carrier like Southwest have lower operating costs at $1,526 than a full service one like United at $2,974, and higher productivity with 399,746 ASM per day against 264,284, resulting in a unit cost of 152600/399746round2 $cts/ASM against 297400/264284round2 $cts/ASM.


title: Airline

text: McKinsey observes that "newer technology, larger aircraft, and increasingly efficient operations continually drive down the cost of running an airline", from nearly 40 US cents per ASK at the beginning of the jet age, to just above 10 cents since 2000. Those improvements were passed onto the customer due to high competition: fares have been falling throughout the history of airlines.


title: Airline

text: Airlines assign prices to their services in an attempt to maximize profitability. The pricing of airline tickets has become increasingly complicated over the years and is now largely determined by computerized yield management systems.


title: Airline

text: Because of the complications in scheduling flights and maintaining profitability, airlines have many loopholes that can be used by the knowledgeable traveler. Many of these airfare secrets are becoming more and more known to the general public, so airlines are forced to make constant adjustments.


title: Airline

text: Most airlines use differentiated pricing, a form of price discrimination, to sell air services at varying prices simultaneously to different segments. Factors influencing the price include the days remaining until departure, the booked load factor, the forecast of total demand by price point, competitive pricing in force, and variations by day of week of departure and by time of day. Carriers often accomplish this by dividing each cabin of the aircraft (first, business and economy) into a number of travel classes for pricing purposes.


title: Airline

text: A complicating factor is that of origin-destination control ("O&D control"). Someone purchasing a ticket from Melbourne to Sydney (as an example) for A$200 is competing with someone else who wants to fly Melbourne to Los Angeles through Sydney on the same flight, and who is willing to pay A$1400. Should the airline prefer the $1400 passenger, or the $200 passenger plus a possible Sydney-Los Angeles passenger willing to pay $1300? Airlines have to make hundreds of thousands of similar pricing decisions daily.


title: Airline

text: The advent of advanced computerized reservations systems in the late 1970s, most notably Sabre, allowed airlines to easily perform cost-benefit analyses on different pricing structures, leading to almost perfect price discrimination in some cases (that is, filling each seat on an aircraft at the highest price that can be charged without driving the consumer elsewhere).


title: Airline

text: The intense nature of airfare pricing has led to the term "fare war" to describe efforts by airlines to undercut other airlines on competitive routes. Through computers, new airfares can be published quickly and efficiently to the airlines' sales channels. For this purpose the airlines use the Airline Tariff Publishing Company (ATPCO), who distribute latest fares for more than 500 airlines to Computer Reservation Systems across the world.


title: Airline

text: The extent of these pricing phenomena is strongest in "legacy" carriers. In contrast, low fare carriers usually offer pre-announced and simplified price structure, and sometimes quote prices for each leg of a trip separately.


title: Airline

text: Computers also allow airlines to predict, with some accuracy, how many passengers will actually fly after making a reservation to fly. This allows airlines to overbook their flights enough to fill the aircraft while accounting for "no-shows", but not enough (in most cases) to force paying passengers off the aircraft for lack of seats, stimulative pricing for low demand flights coupled with overbooking on high demand flights can help reduce this figure. This is especially crucial during tough economic times as airlines undertake massive cuts to ticket prices to retain demand.


title: Airline

text: Over January/February 2018, the cheapest airline surveyed by price comparator rome2rio was now-defunct Tigerair Australia with $0.06/km followed by AirAsia X with $0.07/km, while the most expensive was Charterlines, Inc. with $1.26/km followed by Buddha Air with $1.18/km.


title: Airline

text: For the IATA, the global airline industry revenue was $754 billion in 2017 for a $38.4 billion collective profit, and should rise by 10.7% to $834 billion in 2018 for a $33.8 billion profit forecast, down by 12% due to rising jet fuel and labor costs.


title: Airline

text: The demand for air transport will be less elastic for longer flights than for shorter flights, and more elastic for leisure travel than for business travel.


title: Airline

text: Airlines often have a strong seasonality, with traffic low in winter and peaking in summer. In Europe the most extreme market are the Greek islands with July/August having more than ten times the winter traffic, as Jet2 is the most seasonal among low-cost carriers with July having seven times the January traffic, whereas legacy carriers are much less with only 85/115% variability.


title: Airline

text: Airline financing is quite complex, since airlines are highly leveraged operations. Not only must they purchase (or lease) new airliner bodies and engines regularly, they must make major long-term fleet decisions with the goal of meeting the demands of their markets while producing a fleet that is relatively economical to operate and maintain; comparably Southwest Airlines and their reliance on a single airplane type (the Boeing 737 and derivatives), with the now defunct Eastern Air Lines which operated 17 different aircraft types, each with varying pilot, engine, maintenance, and support needs.


title: Airline

text: A second financial issue is that of hedging oil and fuel purchases, which are usually second only to labor in its relative cost to the company. However, with the current high fuel prices it has become the largest cost to an airline. Legacy airlines, compared with new entrants, have been hit harder by rising fuel prices partly due to the running of older, less fuel efficient aircraft. While hedging instruments can be expensive, they can easily pay for themselves many times over in periods of increasing fuel costs, such as in the 2000–2005 period.


title: Airline

text: In view of the congestion apparent at many international airports, the ownership of slots at certain airports (the right to take-off or land an aircraft at a particular time of day or night) has become a significant tradable asset for many airlines. Clearly take-off slots at popular times of the day can be critical in attracting the more profitable business traveler to a given airline's flight and in establishing a competitive advantage against a competing airline.


title: Airline

text: If a particular city has two or more airports, market forces will tend to attract the less profitable routes, or those on which competition is weakest, to the less congested airport, where slots are likely to be more available and therefore cheaper. For example, Reagan National Airport attracts profitable routes due partly to its congestion, leaving less-profitable routes to Baltimore-Washington International Airport and Dulles International Airport.


title: Airline

text: Other factors, such as surface transport facilities and onward connections, will also affect the relative appeal of different airports and some long-distance flights may need to operate from the one with the longest runway. For example, LaGuardia Airport is the preferred airport for most of Manhattan due to its proximity, while long-distance routes must use John F. Kennedy International Airport's longer runways.


title: Airline

text: Codesharing is the most common type of airline partnership; it involves one airline selling tickets for another airline's flights under its own airline code. An early example of this was Japan Airlines' (JAL) codesharing partnership with Aeroflot in the 1960s on Tokyo–Moscow flights; Aeroflot operated the flights using Aeroflot aircraft, but JAL sold tickets for the flights as if they were JAL flights. This practice allows airlines to expand their operations, at least on paper, into parts of the world where they cannot afford to establish bases or purchase aircraft. Another example was the Austrian–Sabena partnership on the Vienna–Brussels–New York/JFK route during the late '60s, using a Sabena Boeing 707 with Austrian livery.


title: Airline

text: Since airline reservation requests are often made by city-pair (such as "show me flights from Chicago to Düsseldorf"), an airline that can codeshare with another airline for a variety of routes might be able to be listed as indeed offering a Chicago–Düsseldorf flight. The passenger is advised however, that airline no. 1 operates the flight from say Chicago to Amsterdam (for example), and airline no. 2 operates the continuing flight (on a different airplane, sometimes from another terminal) to Düsseldorf. Thus the primary rationale for code sharing is to expand one's service offerings in city-pair terms to increase sales.


title: Airline

text: A more recent development is the airline alliance, which became prevalent in the late 1990s. These alliances can act as virtual mergers to get around government restrictions. The largest are Star Alliance, SkyTeam and Oneworld, and these accounted for over 60% of global commercial air traffic . Alliances of airlines coordinate their passenger service programs (such as lounges and frequent-flyer programs), offer special interline tickets and often engage in extensive codesharing (sometimes systemwide). These are increasingly integrated business combinations—sometimes including cross-equity arrangements—in which products, service standards, schedules, and airport facilities are standardized and combined for higher efficiency. One of the first airlines to start an alliance with another airline was KLM, who partnered with Northwest Airlines. Both airlines later entered the SkyTeam alliance after the fusion of KLM and Air France in 2004.


title: Airline

text: Often the companies combine IT operations, or purchase fuel and aircraft as a bloc to achieve higher bargaining power. However, the alliances have been most successful at purchasing invisible supplies and services, such as fuel. Airlines usually prefer to purchase items visible to their passengers to differentiate themselves from local competitors. If an airline's main domestic competitor flies Boeing airliners, then the airline may prefer to use Airbus aircraft regardless of what the rest of the alliance chooses.


title: Airline

text: The world's largest airlines can be defined in several ways. , American Airlines Group was the largest by fleet size, passengers carried and revenue passenger mile. Delta Air Lines was the largest by revenue, assets value and market capitalization. Lufthansa Group was the largest by number of employees, FedEx Express by freight tonne-kilometres, Turkish Airlines by number of countries served and UPS Airlines by number of destinations served (though United Airlines was the largest passenger airline by number of destinations served).


title: Airline

text: Historically, air travel has survived largely through state support, whether in the form of equity or subsidies. The airline industry as a whole has made a cumulative loss during its 100-year history.


title: Airline

text: One argument is that positive externalities, such as higher growth due to global mobility, outweigh the microeconomic losses and justify continuing government intervention. A historically high level of government intervention in the airline industry can be seen as part of a wider political consensus on strategic forms of transport, such as highways and railways, both of which receive public funding in most parts of the world. Although many countries continue to operate state-owned or parastatal airlines, many large airlines today are privately owned and are therefore governed by microeconomic principles to maximize shareholder profit.


title: Airline

text: In December 1991, the collapse of Pan Am, an airline often credited for shaping the international airline industry, highlighted the financial complexities faced by major airline companies.


title: Airline

text: Following the 1978 deregulation, U.S. carriers did not manage to make an aggregate profit for 12 years in 31, including four years where combined losses amounted to $10 billion, but rebounded with eight consecutive years of profits since 2010, including its four with over $10 billion profits. They drop loss-making routes, avoid fare wars and market share battles, limit capacity growth, add hub feed with regional jets to increase their profitability. They change schedules to create more connections, buy used aircraft, reduce international frequencies and leverage partnerships to optimize capacities and benefit from overseas connectivity.


title: Airline

text: Aircraft engines emit noise pollution, gases and particulate emissions, and contribute to global dimming.


title: Airline

text: Domestic air transport grew in China at 15.5 percent annually from 2001 to 2006. The rate of air travel globally increased at 3.7 percent per year over the same time. In the EU greenhouse gas emissions from aviation increased by 87% between 1990 and 2006. However it must be compared with the flights increase, only in UK, between 1990 and 2006 terminal passengers increased from 100 000 thousands to 250 000 thousands., according to AEA reports every year, 750 million passengers travel by European airlines, which also share 40% of merchandise value in and out of Europe. Without even pressure from "green activists", targeting lower ticket prices, generally, airlines do what is possible to cut the fuel consumption (and gas emissions connected therewith). Further, according to some reports, it can be concluded that the last piston-powered aircraft were as fuel-efficient as the average jet in 2005.


title: Airline

text: Despite continuing efficiency improvements from the major aircraft manufacturers, the expanding demand for global air travel has resulted in growing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Currently, the aviation sector, including US domestic and global international travel, make approximately 1.6 percent of global anthropogenic GHG emissions per annum. North America accounts for nearly 40 percent of the world's GHG emissions from aviation fuel use.


title: Airline

text: In the context of climate change and peak oil, there is a debate about possible taxation of air travel and the inclusion of aviation in an emissions trading scheme, with a view to ensuring that the total external costs of aviation are taken into account.


title: Airline

text: The airline industry is responsible for about 11 percent of greenhouse gases emitted by the U.S. transportation sector. Boeing estimates that biofuels could reduce flight-related greenhouse-gas emissions by 60 to 80 percent. The solution would be blending algae fuels with existing jet fuel:


title: Airline

text: Each operator of a scheduled or charter flight uses an airline call sign when communicating with airports or air traffic control. Most of these call-signs are derived from the airline's trade name, but for reasons of history, marketing, or the need to reduce ambiguity in spoken English (so that pilots do not mistakenly make navigational decisions based on instructions issued to a different aircraft), some airlines and air forces use call-signs less obviously connected with their trading name. For example, British Airways uses a "Speedbird" call-sign, named after the logo of one of its predecessors, BOAC, while SkyEurope used "Relax".


title: Airline

text: The various types of airline personnel include Flight crew, responsible for the operation of the aircraft. Flight crew members include: Pilots (Captain and First Officer: some older aircraft also required a Flight Engineer and/or a Navigator); Flight attendants (led by a purser on larger aircraft); In-flight security personnel on some airlines (most notably El Al)


title: Airline

text: Groundcrew, responsible for operations at airports, include Aerospace and avionics engineers responsible for certifying the aircraft for flight and management of aircraft maintenance; Aerospace engineers, responsible for airframe, powerplant and electrical systems maintenance; Avionics engineers responsible for avionics and instruments maintenance; Airframe and powerplant technicians; Electric System technicians, responsible for maintenance of electrical systems; Flight dispatchers; Baggage handlers; Ramp Agents; Remote centralized weight and balancing; Gate agents; Ticket agents; Passenger service agents (such as airline lounge employees); Reservation agents, usually (but not always) at facilities outside the airport; Crew schedulers.


title: Airline

text: Airlines follow a corporate structure where each broad area of operations (such as maintenance, flight operations (including flight safety), and passenger service) is supervised by a vice president. Larger airlines often appoint vice presidents to oversee each of the airline's hubs as well. Airlines employ lawyers to deal with regulatory procedures and other administrative tasks.


title: Airline

text: The pattern of ownership has been privatized since the mid-1980s, that is, the ownership has gradually changed from governments to private and individual sectors or organizations. This occurs as regulators permit greater freedom and non-government ownership, in steps that are usually decades apart. This pattern is not seen for all airlines in all regions. Many major airlines operating between the 1940s and 1980s were government-owned or government-established. However, most airlines from the earliest days of air travel in the 1920s and 1930s were personal businesses.


title: Airline

text: Growth rates are not consistent in all regions, but countries with a deregulated airline industry have more competition and greater pricing freedom. This results in lower fares and sometimes dramatic spurts in traffic growth. The U.S., Australia, Canada, Japan, Brazil, India and other markets exhibit this trend. The industry has been observed to be cyclical in its financial performance. Four or five years of poor earnings precede five or six years of improvement. But profitability even in the good years is generally low, in the range of 2–3% net profit after interest and tax. In times of profit, airlines lease new generations of airplanes and upgrade services in response to higher demand. Since 1980, the industry has not earned back the cost of capital during the best of times. Conversely, in bad times losses can be dramatically worse. Warren Buffett in 1999 said "the money that had been made since the dawn of aviation by all of this country's airline companies was zero. Absolutely zero."


title: Airline

text: As in many mature industries, consolidation is a trend. Airline groupings may consist of limited bilateral partnerships, long-term, multi-faceted alliances between carriers, equity arrangements, mergers, or takeovers. Since governments often restrict ownership and merger between companies in different countries, most consolidation takes place within a country. In the U.S., over 200 airlines have merged, been taken over, or gone out of business since the Airline Deregulation Act in 1978. Many international airline managers are lobbying their governments to permit greater consolidation to achieve higher economy and efficiency.


title: Environmentalism

text: Environmentalism or environmental rights is a broad philosophy, ideology, and social movement regarding concerns for environmental protection and improvement of the health of the environment, particularly as the measure for this health seeks to incorporate the impact of changes to the environment on humans, animals, plants and non-living matter. While environmentalism focuses more on the environmental and nature-related aspects of green ideology and politics, ecologism combines the ideology of social ecology and environmentalism. "Ecologism" is more commonly used in continental European languages, while "environmentalism" is more commonly used in English but the words have slightly different connotations.


title: Environmentalism

text: Environmentalism advocates the preservation, restoration and improvement of the natural environment and critical earth system elements or processes such as the climate, and may be referred to as a movement to control pollution or protect plant and animal diversity. For this reason, concepts such as a land ethic, environmental ethics, biodiversity, ecology, and the biophilia hypothesis figure predominantly.


title: Environmentalism

text: At its crux, environmentalism is an attempt to balance relations between humans and the various natural systems on which they depend in such a way that all the components are accorded a proper degree of sustainability. The exact measures and outcomes of this balance is controversial and there are many different ways for environmental concerns to be expressed in practice. Environmentalism and environmental concerns are often represented by the colour green, but this association has been appropriated by the marketing industries for the tactic known as greenwashing.


title: Environmentalism

text: Environmentalism is opposed by anti-environmentalism, which says that the Earth is less fragile than some environmentalists maintain, and portrays environmentalism as overreacting to the human contribution to climate change or opposing human advancement.


title: Environmentalism

text: "Environmentalism" denotes a social movement that seeks to influence the political process by lobbying, activism, and education in order to protect natural resources and ecosystems.


title: Environmentalism

text: An "environmentalist" is a person who may speak out about our natural environment and the sustainable management of its resources through changes in public policy or individual behaviour. This may include supporting practices such as informed consumption, conservation initiatives, investment in renewable resources, improved efficiencies in the materials economy, transitioning to new accounting paradigms such as ecological economics, renewing and revitalizing our connections with non-human life or even opting to have one less child to reduce consumption and pressure on resources.


title: Environmentalism

text: In various ways (for example, grassroots activism and protests), environmentalists and environmental organisations seek to give the natural world a stronger voice in human affairs.


title: Environmentalism

text: In general terms, environmentalists advocate the sustainable management of resources, and the protection (and restoration, when necessary) of the natural environment through changes in public policy and individual behaviour. In its recognition of humanity as a participant in ecosystems, the movement is centered around ecology, health, and human rights.


title: Environmentalism

text: A concern for environmental protection has recurred in diverse forms, in different parts of the world, throughout history.


title: Environmentalism

text: The earliest ideas of environmental protectionism can be found in Jainism, a religion from ancient India revived by Mahavira in the 6th century BC. Jainism offers a view that is in many ways compatible with core values associated with environmental activism, such as the protection of life by nonviolence, which could form a strong ecological ethos for global protection of the environment. Mahavira's teachings on the symbiosis between all living beings—as well as the five elements of earth, water, air, fire, and space—are core to environmental thought today.