The views I am putting forward today are my own I and may not represent the views of other independent airlines.

Low fares are not a new feature of the Civil Aviation industry. After all, charter airlines have been providing low cost air transportation for the past three decades, and what a painful process the development of those services has been. For years scheduled airlines, backed by Government regulatory agencies, subscribed to the theory that charter services, if liberalised, could lead to the destruction of scheduled services and therefore scheduled services should be protected. In the UK, the growth of Inclusive Tour Charters to points in Europe was slowed down by capacity restrictions and by pricing policies designed to minimise diversion of traffic from scheduled services.