20-Year Dreaming: The Beginning of aviation’s most exciting era

This article is based on a presentation by Peter Harbison, Chairman of Greener Airlines at WIT Singapore, October 2025

The Mother Ship Wobbles

Almost every one of your businesses represented at WIT depends on aviation. I always find it a bit ironic though that it’s barely considered. Most take it for granted. Flights happen, planes land, passengers shuffle through terminals. But beneath the glossy surface of global connectivity lies a fragile ecosystem, one buffeted by uncertainty, upheaval, and unpredictability. And you can bet it’s going to change dramatically in the coming decades.

The good news? Those same forces that make aviation volatile are also its greatest source of opportunity. Change + Uncertainty + Upheaval = Innovation.  And opportunities for those ready and able to adapt. The question isn’t whether aviation will change, it’s how we’ll use the turbulence to fly smarter.

From “No LCCs” to “Mostly LCCs”. The 20-Year Shockwave

When looking forward 20 years it helps to see where we have come from in the past two decades. In 2005, no one at Changi Airport imagined that low-cost carriers (LCCs) would command nearly a third of total seats, as they do today. The CEO of Singapore Airlines made a personal appearance from the floor at our ground-breaking LCC Conference in Singapore in early 2004 – to explain to the audience why LCCs would never work in Asia.

Melbourne Airport now counts over 20% of its international capacity on long-haul LCCs. The long-haul model is particularly pungent; it strikes at the heart of the full service model. There’s a dozen of them in this region, yet they scarcely exist elsewhere.. 

This is a seismic transformation. It’s not just a new business model; it’s a new mindset. The LCC revolution democratised travel, forced legacy carriers to reinvent themselves, and re-wired consumer expectations. What was once “low-cost” is now mainstream. And, by the way, unit emissions are lower than full service airlines.

And while these operational revolutions reshaped skies, the sales revolution changed how those flights are sold. Twenty-five years ago, over 80% of tickets came through travel agents. Today? Around 20%. The shift to digital, direct and dynamic has rewritten distribution, yet the real disruption is yet to come.

The Triple Threat: Sustainability, Supply Chain, and Survival

Aviation’s challenges are no secret: sustainability, aircraft technology, supply-chain fragility, and the relentless pressure to remain economically viable. And at the centre of it all, the passenger, whose expectations keep rising - even as patience keeps falling.

The fight for the environment remains the industry’s Achilles heel. Airline passenger numbers are set to triple by 2050, and that means emissions will skyrocket too. Despite optimistic pledges, the maths just doesn’t add up.

By 2050, IATA projects that even with heavy reliance on offsets and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), we’ll only scratch the surface. SAF — currently less than 1% of total fuel use — simply can’t scale fast enough. Offsets are no long-term solution; they don’t prevent emissions. The real answer lies in new technologies - ones that don’t yet exist at scale.

War: The Dark Catalyst of Innovation

It might sound bleak, but history is clear: war accelerates invention. Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s warning that we’re at the dawn of “the most destructive arms race in human history” also implies something else — a race that could reshape civilian technology.

Hundreds of billions will pour into drone development, unmanned aerial vehicles, battery systems, and hydrogen propulsion. The military’s hunger for efficiency, endurance, and autonomy will spill into civil aviation faster than any green policy could dream. It’s ugly, but Military is the Mother of Invention.

Three years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, drones are already redefining logistics, security, and battlefield strategy. Many now run on hydrogen. Soon, they’ll be battery-powered. And as battery density improves, electric flight will become mainstream by 2045. The future of aviation, as with other industries, will revolve around quantum advances in battery power – and look to AI to accelerate that process.

The road to sustainable travel won’t start in the skies of Singapore or Seattle, but in drone factories and defence labs.

Call to Arms #1: Fix the Airport Experience

If you’ve ever raced through traffic (and who hasn’t!) to an airport only to queue, wait, and queue again, you know the truth: airports are broken. The most arduous part of any journey isn’t the flight. It’s the friction before and after it.

Queues! From parking and check-in to security, being herded through a vast shopping mall, boarding, then on arrival, baggage, and taxis - it’s a cascade of bottlenecks. The “Invisible Airport” is my ideal; a place where every process fades into the background, where the traveller moves seamlessly from curb to seat without noticing the machinery of logistics underneath.

Imagine terminals designed around flow, not friction. Imagine a system that anticipates, not reacts. It’s possible - but only if airlines, airports, regulators, and tech innovators align around a shared mission: the passenger journey.

Call to Arms #2: Communicate with Passengers (Seriously)

In 2025, rebooking a passenger after disruption shouldn’t feel like a 1990s call-centre ordeal. The technology exists to re-accommodate automatically, re-inform instantly, and rebuild trust proactively. But too often, it’s simply not a priority. We’re captured.

Passengers need – and are right to expect - real-time updates, flexible alternatives, and empathy. Not lame apologies and (when it suits us) vouchers. Ironically, 50 years ago it was easier to rebook across carriers than it is today. The future must be seamless connectivity: between airlines, alliances, and even independent operators. OK, competition creates hurdles, but it’s in their interests as well.

If we could interline tickets in 1975, surely we can interlink experiences in 2025.

Contactless Travel: The Dream Journey

My ultimate vision - the “contactless journey” – reverses the order. Rather than forcing passengers to adapt to airline and airport processes, it re-imagines those processes with the traveller at the centre.

One identity, one consent, one flow. From booking to boarding, travellers move across systems using interoperable standards. Airlines, airports, and governments collaborate - not compete - to make frictionless travel the norm.

That all means:

• Design from the ideal journey from the top down. We shouldn’t accept legacy systems dishing up what suits them;

• Ignite collaboration. These are complex systems and airlines, airports, regulators, and tech players must coordinate to deliver what the traveller needs;

• Move ahead with harmonised standards that can be synchronously improved; and

• Contactless travel!

  
  

This isn’t some utopian ideal. It’s fully achievable. But it demands courage to break silos and a willingness to rebuild from the traveller up. We need to demand improvements. Don’t accept second best!

Aviation’s Next 20 Years Begin Now

If the last two decades gave us LCCs, digital booking, and mass access to air travel, the next two will bring sustainability, electrification, and seamless mobility. The pace of change will make the 2000s look glacial.

But for that to happen, the industry must embrace discomfort - and dream big again. The future of aviation won’t be shaped by aircraft orders or fuel formulas. It will be shaped by empathy, imagination, and interoperability.

This isn’t The End.

It’s The Beginning - of aviation’s most exciting (and challenging) flight yet. 

Hear Peter Harbison speak on the aviation outlook at FACTS - Australia’s largest business travel and events summit and expo, ICC Sydney, 25/26 November 2025.