Air Travel:Factors to Consider

January 14th, 2009 Posted in Airline Flight Insurance

Air Travel-Pros and Cons

The popularity of air travel has been increasing in the past few decades.  Air travel is convenient and safe and these are the main reasons that have contributed to the increase in popularity of air travel.  The following are some of the positive and negative factors involving air travel.

Disadvantage: Airplanes Cause Pollution.

The major shortcoming of air travel is the pollution caused by it. Airplanes emit greenhouse gases into our atmosphere which contributes to things like global warming.  A lot of people are keen to minimize the effect of global warming on the planet and they find this a major setback. Nowadays many airlines are taking necessary actions to reduce the global warming effect by becoming more conscious about the environment. This can include them retrofitting their airplanes with a device called a winglet which improves fuel efficiency.  Apart from this the airlines invest a large sum of money to replace their old aircraft by fuel efficient aircraft.

Disadvantage: High Cost

Another con that keeps people from traveling by air is cost.  You may be able to travel by car to many destinations at a very cheap price as compared to traveling by flight. There are ways to get around this by taking advantage of discount
airline travel.  You can decide to fly in case you get a very good deal on your airfare.

Disadvantage: Fear of Flying

There are a number of people who just don’t want to fly.  For anyone that has ever been on a flight that has experienced extreme turbulence or some type of other event it can be rather terrifying. 

Advantage: Speed of Travel

One of the major advantages in air travel is that it is able to take you to any of the places where airports are available at a much faster rate than any other forms of transportation.  While it can take days to drive across the United States, a person can fly the same distance in a number of hours.  This gives you extra days for enjoying your vacations because you save a number of days by traveling by air.

Advantage: Easy to Travel Long Distances

It is possible to cover long distances by flight in a reasonably short time whereas it is difficult to cover far off destinations by other modes of transportation. We can pretty much travel to any destination around the globe by air.  Some of these flights might prove to be quite long but they are still much shorter than if you had to rely on alternative means of transportation.

Advantage:  Safety

When you consider various modes of travel, you will find that travel by air is the safest. Each year thousands of deadly car crashes happen.  Similarly, there is no dearth of train accidents. This is not to say that air accidents do not take place; however frequency of such accidents is very small.  For many people this makes it an easy decision to choose air travel over any other form of transportation.

Choosing air travel is a personal decision, based on the factors discussed above along with a multitude factors not discussed here.  For most travelers safety, speed of travel and cost are the over riding factors.  As long as cost remains affordable air travel will continue to grow in popularity.