Is the age of cheap air travel coming to an end?

Those of us born in the last forty years tend to take cheap air travel for granted, but rising oil costs, environmental concerns and the current economic crisis could mean the end to cheap plane flights.

The New Republic recently published a rather depressing piece about the future of air travel under the gloomy title, The End of Aviation.

Mass aviation could be coming to an end. No longer would air travel be like the Internet or television — a cheap technology available to virtually anyone, shaping our world in countless little ways. If that happened, the result would mean more than just the end of easy weekend jaunts to Bermuda or annual Christmas visits home. It could mean major shifts in the economy, changes in immigration patterns across the world, and perhaps even a remapping of the planet as we know it.

On the surface it seems like the demise of aviation would be bad news for vagabonds looking for a cheap easy way to get around, but I’m not so sure.

The loss of cheap air travel would no doubt have a serious impact on our world, both as travelers and as people, but that impact wouldn’t be all bad. After all, travel didn’t start with planes and it probably won’t end there either, should such a thing come to pass.

When it comes down to it, air travel isn’t what most of us call traveling anyway. Sitting in a giant flying metal tube is not a journey, it’s an endurance test. Sure, it makes a quick way to get from A to B, but it isn’t much of an experience.

At the same time it’s difficult to imagine a world where jumping on a plane and waking up on the other side of the world isn’t an option.

I’m curious what readers think, would the end of aviation be a disaster for travel? Or would it simple mean that travelers switched to a new mode of transportation? Forget for a moment that the article above is quite possibly dead wrong and just imagine if flying were indeed no longer viable… how would it impact how you travel? Where you travel? Would it be a good thing or a bad one?

Let me know what you think.