'Low-Fares’ is a misleading term. Low compared with what? It certainly implies change. Perhaps ‘lower’ fares are what the debate is all about. There are tourism as well as aviation conditions.

Fares are vital to tourism. A quarter of a century of low fares has supported the world tourism boom, making tourism the biggest single factor in world trade, and produced a growth rate of 8-9%, considerably higher than that for world trade as a whole. In particular, the trans-Atlantic fare revolution is not new.

The journal of the ITA gave an illustration of this, comparing a package tour New York/Rome for Holy Year 1950 priced at $585 and the same offer for the second Holy Year 1975 at $580. Taking into account the equivalent dollar purchasing power, the 1950 offer represented a price of $1400. ‘Eternal bliss', said the ITA reporter, ‘at half the price!’