Beyond open skies. A new regime for international aviation

Abstract:
Increasingly, governments everywhere are backing away from their earlier micromanagement of international aviation, allowing carriers to tap market opportunities wherever they can be found and with far more ease and responsiveness. Accordingly, the industry will inevitably generate new paradigms of competitive market behaviour. This book presents thinking needed on an appropriate legal and policy architecture to govern the industry in the decades ahead.

'Beyond Open Skies' offers a systematic comparative analysis of the legal and policy dimensions of airline deregulation by federal fiat in the United States and by supranational collaboration in the European Union. The book draws upon a variety of sources, including very recent developments in US and EC international aviation law, policy, and diplomacy, to propose a genuine multilateral air transport system. It examines the potential of the ‘open skies’ initiative, in the aftermath of the new US-EC air transport agreement, to inspire a genuine globalization of the world’s air transport industry in such crucial aspects as:
- cabotage
- ownership and citizenship requirements
- route selection
- airline identity
- capacity
- pricing regimes
- competition and public aid
- regulatory harmonization
- labour laws
- provisions for charter and/or cargo transportation
- fair operation of and access to computer reservations systems
- authorization of code-sharing arrangements
- alliances and antitrust immunity
- dispute resolution.

Recognizing that the current global air transport regulatory system is inadequate to the commercial demands of the modern industry, the author shows that the imperatives for its reform transcend domestic debates about incremental public intervention in the business of providing air transport. The book’s in-depth analysis of how the law and policy of US and EC airline deregulation can be integrated into the framework for a second-stage US-EC air transport agreement builds upon the efforts of government officials, industry stakeholders, and academic commentators who have encouraged a progressive liberalisation of air transport.

Contents:
1. Introduction: Preparing for a new era in international aviation
2. Prelude to change: A synthesis of transatlantic aviation relations 1993–2008
3. Airspace sovereignty: The ontology of the Chicago system of international air transport regulation
4. Model jurisdiction I: The United States: Airline deregulation within and beyond a unitary space
5. Model jurisdiction II: The European Union: An experiment in multilateral airline liberalization
6. Conclusion: A proposal for a second-stage US-EC air transport agreement