TRANSATLANTIC AIR TRANSPORT: ROUTES TO LIBERALIZATION MARTIN STANILAND GRADUATE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS AND EUROPEAN UNION CENTER UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH Addresses for correspondence: 3J34 Forbes Quadrangle, University of Pittsburgh, PITTSBURGH, PA.15260 E-mail:
[email protected] Phone: (412) 648-7656 (home: (412) 371-5964) Fax: (412) 648-2605 TRANSATLANTIC AIR TRANSPORT: ROUTES TO LIBERALIZATION1 MARTIN STANILAND GRADUATE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS AND EUROPEAN UNION CENTER UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH Introduction: The air transport industry, for all its imperfections and peculiarities, represents perhaps the greatest achievement of technology and organization in the twentieth century – an achievement which should inspire admiration comparable to that of Dr Samuel Johnson’s observation about the dog walking on its hind legs – “Sir, it is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”1 But commercial air transport is also an intensely paradoxical industry. Cosmopolitan by its very nature and daily operations, and dedicated to increasing opportunities for mobility, this industry is also one that has been notorious for cloaking itself - or being cloaked - in the mantle of nationalism. Air transport was, to no-one’s surprise, the one topic that participants in the original negotiations about the General Agreement on Trade in Services unanimously agreed to exclude from their agenda.2 The nationalism and protectionism endemic in this industry are, indeed, a serious brake on the globalization that observers have discerned in recent enterprise alliances such as Star and Oneworld. Two examples will illustrate the archaic and cramping character of the regulatory regime currently governing the industry – the so-called “Chicago regime”.