Last ten year have seen significant growth in worldwide air travel. There are many reasons and benefits to this development. However there are also significant drawbacks.
The biggest reason for increase in global air travel seems to be a significant decrease in the cost of airplane tickets. Thanks to the technological developments in aircraft fuel consumption airplanes can operate same routes at much lower lost. Additionally the air travel market is very comeptitive with many low cost carriers pushing the prices of tickets down. For example in Europe companies such as ryanair and wizzair sell their tickets very cheaply which allows everyone to fly and additionally made forced traditional companies to adjust their offerings.
In recent decades large groups of people experienced significant increase of their incomes. This increase in wealth and growing middle class means that more people than ever can afford to fly all around the globe. Markets such as China and India especially saw incredible growth in amount of people flying yearly due to economic development.
But this increase in global air travel is not without the cost, air travel adds up to the greenhouse gas emissions that are driving force of climate change. Additionally airplane fumes have negative impact on higher parts of troposphere and can cause damage to the ozone layer. On top of that airports cause a lot of noise pollution to the people living near them.
In conclusion the increase in the air travel is caused by decrease in cost of air travel and growing wealth around the globe, But in my opinion the impact of this phenomenon is dire.