Transportation I: The Evolution and Role of Transport in Tourism, the Road and Rail Networks of the World, Transport in India Past and Present, and Air Transport Regulation: Licensing, Weights and Capacities, Scheduled, Non-Scheduled and No-Frill Airlines, Open Skies, the Freedoms of the Air, International Conventions, IATA, ICAO, DGCA, AAI, GDS and the Airline Business

Every leap in tourism has followed a leap in transport. The stagecoach and the sailing ship served the Grand Tour; the railway and the steamship created the excursion and the seaside resort in the nineteenth century; the motor car and the motor coach spread tourism into the countryside in the twentieth; and the jet aircraft, from the late 1950s, and then wide-bodied jets from 1970 made long-haul mass tourism possible, while low-cost airlines from the 1990s made short breaks abroad routine. Transport plays four roles in tourism: it provides access from the generating region to the destination and within it; it is often a large share of the cost of a trip, so fares shape demand; it can be an attraction in itself, as with cruises, heritage railways and scenic drives; and its routes and hubs decide which destinations develop.

The major railway networks of the world include the Trans-Siberian, the longest railway line in the world at about 9,300 km from Moscow to Vladivostok; the high-speed networks of Japan (the Shinkansen, from 1964), France (the TGV, from 1981) and China, which now has the largest high-speed network in the world; the dense European network sold to non-Europeans through the Eurail pass; Amtrak in the United States (1971); the transcontinental lines of Canada and Australia (the Indian Pacific and the Ghan); and Indian Railways, one of the largest networks in the world under a single management, with about 68,000 route kilometres. In India, transport has run from palanquins, bullock carts, horse-drawn tongas and river boats through the first passenger train from Bori Bunder (Bombay) to Thane on 16 April 1853, the first airmail flight from Allahabad to Naini in 1911 and J. R. D. Tata's first flight for Tata Air Lines from Karachi to Bombay in 1932, to the nationalised airlines of 1953, the Golden Quadrilateral highways, the metro railways (Kolkata from 1984), semi-high-speed Vande Bharat trains (from 2019) and regional air connectivity under UDAN.

An airline may carry passengers only under a licence. In India the Directorate General of Civil Aviation grants an Air Operator Certificate and a Scheduled Operator's Permit to a scheduled airline, which operates published timetables open to the public, and a Non-Scheduled Operator's Permit to charter and air-taxi operators, which fly on demand. The licensing regime rested on the Aircraft Act 1934 and the Aircraft Rules 1937 and the requirements the DGCA sets in its Civil Aviation Requirements; Parliament enacted the Bharatiya Vayuyan Adhiniyam, 2024 to replace the 1934 Act. "Limitations of weights and capacities" are of two kinds. Technically, every aircraft has certified limits, a maximum take-off weight, a maximum landing weight and a maximum payload, so passengers, baggage, cargo and fuel must be balanced within them, which is why baggage allowances exist. Commercially, the capacity an airline may operate between two countries, the seats or frequencies per week, is fixed by the bilateral air services agreement between the governments.

A no-frills or low-cost carrier keeps its unit costs down by flying one aircraft type, turning aircraft round quickly for high daily utilisation, flying point to point rather than through hubs, using secondary airports where possible, selling directly online, and charging separately for meals, seat selection and checked baggage. The model began with Southwest Airlines in the United States (1971) and spread to Europe with Ryanair and easyJet and to Asia with AirAsia; in India Air Deccan (2003) opened it and IndiGo, the country's largest airline by domestic market share, built on it. Open skies is the policy of removing government restrictions on routes, capacity, frequencies and fares between countries, leaving them to the airlines. The first open skies agreement was signed between the United States and the Netherlands in 1992, and the European Union created a single aviation market in 1997. India's National Civil Aviation Policy 2016 offered open skies, on a reciprocal basis, with SAARC countries and with countries whose capitals lie beyond a 5,000 km radius of Delhi.

The functions of the four bodies divide cleanly. IATA, the airlines' trade association, coordinates fares and interline rules, runs the Billing and Settlement Plan and Clearing House, accredits travel agents and sets commercial standards and codes. ICAO, the states' organisation, adopts safety, security and navigation standards and audits their implementation. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation, India's regulator, licenses pilots, engineers and air traffic controllers, certifies the airworthiness of aircraft and grants air operator certificates, approves schedules and oversees safety, while aviation security belongs to the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security and accident investigation to the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau. The Airports Authority of India builds and runs airports and provides air navigation services.

A global distribution system (GDS) is a worldwide computerised network through which travel agents see availability and fares and book and ticket airlines, hotels, car hire and rail. GDSs grew out of airline computer reservation systems: American Airlines' SABRE, built with IBM in the 1960s, was the first. Today the main GDSs are Amadeus (founded in 1987 by European airlines, based in Madrid), Sabre, and Travelport, which runs Galileo, Worldspan and Apollo. A booking creates a passenger name record (PNR), the file that holds the itinerary, names, contact details and ticketing arrangement. Airlines have lately pushed direct and "New Distribution Capability" channels, IATA's XML standard for richer offers, to reduce GDS fees and sell ancillaries.

The world airline business is organised around full-service network carriers, low-cost carriers, charter and leisure airlines, regional airlines and cargo airlines. The largest network carriers include the American "big three" (American, Delta and United), the European groups (Lufthansa Group, Air France-KLM, and IAG with British Airways and Iberia), and the Gulf and Asian hub carriers (Emirates, Qatar Airways, Etihad, Singapore Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Turkish Airlines); most belong to the three alliances, Star Alliance, oneworld and SkyTeam. The business is capital-intensive, cyclical and thin-margined, sensitive to fuel prices, exchange rates and shocks. India's domestic market, one of the fastest-growing in the world, has passed through the nationalised era (Indian Airlines and Air India from 1953), the entry of private airlines after 1994, the failures of Kingfisher (2012), Jet Airways (2019) and Go First (2023), the return of Air India to the Tata group in 2022 and its merger with Vistara in 2024, and the launch of Akasa Air in 2022; IndiGo carries the largest share of domestic passengers. The regional connectivity scheme UDAN, whose first flight ran from Shimla to Delhi in April 2017, subsidises fares on under-served routes.