Changing times are leading to the renaissance of regional air travel and new market viability for amphibious aircrafts. Commercial aviation is already the most global of businesses. Official Airline Guide data shows that the global network connects all countries in the world: 3,190 cities and 3,250 airports. Connectivity between these airports, which has doubled since the early 1980s, continues to grow, and more of the world’s people from both emerging and mature economies use aviation in their daily lives.

This global network travel encourages more people to see themselves as global citizens. In the same way as access to the internet and social media provoke curiosity and interest in other people and other places, physically travelling between cities and countries satisfies that curiosity in allowing people to meet and understand each other and different cultures.

One only needs to look at the “propensity to fly” section of global market forecasts to see how air travel can grow further. This is particularly noticeable in the emerging countries. In India for example, the propensity to fly is 0.1 trips per capita today, but by 2037 will rise roughly four times greater. A BBC survey questioned 20,000 people from 18 countries and found that 56% of the people surveyed coming from emerging countries saw themselves first and foremost as global citizens. In India this figure was 67%. The BBC suggests this is partly because “…the world as a whole is becoming more prosperous and air travel is becoming more affordable to the rising middle classes.”  Recovery from the global pandemic and the ever-increasing e-commerce market has only magnified these effects.

The challenge is how to most efficiently, safely, and effectively connect these global citizens, often living in remote areas with poor or limited infrastructure to the existing global network of airports.

In a world that is 71% covered with water and in which 90% of the population lives within 10 km of a surface water body, an amphibious aircraft such as the ME-1A that can carry 19 passengers or 8,000lb of cargo is the ideal solution to effectively connect these global citizens to the existing global network of airports without the need for additional costly, time consuming, environmentally impactful infrastructure.