Global Society and its Wings: Air Mobility, Territorial Differentiation of Passenger Traffic Density, and Connectivity of the Leading Countries of the World

The global community formation is based on the air service development. The passenger traffic growth makes space and time smaller, increases interconnection and interdependence both within individual countries and around the world, and promotes integration. The passenger traffic volume was steadily growing in all countries worldwide at the beginning of the 21st century. At the same time, the airspace is becoming more and more international. The former absolute predominance of Western countries in the air passenger transportation has irreversibly become a thing of the past, and the positions of developing countries, especially Asian ones, are rapidly strengthening. The United States and China are the two world leaders in terms of air passenger traffic these days. Russia's position in the global air space is not strong enough, despite the passenger traffic growth after 2000. Russia has not yet reached the level of 1990. The things get worse due to the decline of railway passenger carriages, first of all, by a serious lag in the high-speed railways development. Air passenger traffic in Russia is characterized by a high level of territorial differentiation, since it is largely concentrated in the Moscow and partly St. Petersburg aviation hubs. This means that access to airline services is difficult for people of most regions of Russia. Russia significantly exceeds the level of the United States, China, and any other major countries of the world in terms of territorial differentiation of passenger traffic density. As to aviation connectivity, Russia is inferior to all major countries of the world - passenger traffic does not integrate its territory intensively enough. Given the continuous connectivity growth of all other countries of the world, the low level of connectivity of Russia may create problems for the integrity of the country in the future. The reasons for the insufficiently high density of passenger traffic, its high territorial differentiation, and low connectivity in Russia are the degradation of the national division of labor due to the decline of high-tech and knowledgeintensive industries, as well as the low income of the majority of the people.

Keywords

Authors

References