By: John Byerly |
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It was in 1985, the year Airline Business was founded, that I landed my first job in aviation as the State Department lawyer responsible for air services negotiations and policy.
At the time, Pan Am was already in terminal decline. The sale of its Pacific routes to United in 1986 gave me a first taste of negotiating with Japan and the bittersweet pleasure of equating victory with hanging onto existing rights.
In the North Atlantic, the USA was mired in the repulsive muck of the 1977 Bermuda 2 agreement with the UK. Controversies over capacity, pricing, and business restrictions flared up constantly, with France, Germany, Italy and other nations on the Continent keeping me and other lawyers gainfully, if not productively, employed. A common European air transport market was a great topic for cocktail party-chatter but far detached from reality.
What a difference today. The USA has negotiated Open Skies with almost 100 countries, including a landmark two-stage accord with the European Union, and a brand new open skies agreement with Japan, an achievement that still seems like a fairy tale. In three bold packages, Europe worked a miracle of its own, creating a single aviation market and massively shifting regulatory competence from the member states to the European Union.
Elsewhere, IATA, which had once focused on fixing airline prices, is now leading the charge for liberalisation under the banner of Giovanni Bisignani's visionary "Agenda for Freedom". The low-cost carrier phenomenon has spread from the USA to Europe, and onward to Asia and Latin America.
PACE OF CHANGE
New world-class airlines in the Gulf States have jumped to the head of the class in aircraft purchases and passenger growth. The pace of change is accelerating, with most of the world now committed to policies that are pro-growth, pro-competition and pro-consumer.
These advances in aviation liberalisation, however, do not mean that we lack challenges. Severe infrastructure and environmental restrictions in many regions threaten to turn "open kies" into "Open and Shut". The Chicago Convention system of thousands of bilateral air services agreements, most with the traditional "nationality clause", throws up a high hurdle for the consolidation of airlines across borders.
Disparate labour laws - even within the single EU market - are a grave concern for airline unions and an impediment to liberalization of the blanket prohibition on foreign control of US air carriers.
Almost a decade after the terrorist atrocities of September 11, we still struggle to find the right balance between security and commercial viability. Today's generation of policy- and opinion-makers will have their hands full, and Airline Business will have no trouble continuing to fill each edition with insightful reporting on an industry that has never known a day without tumult.
My hope is that newcomers to this fascinating world of flying will enjoy the next quarter of a century just as much as I have relished the excitement and challenges of the past 25 years.
BYERLY INTERVIEW: MAY 2010
| FROM THE ARCHIVES We spoke to John Byerley in May as part of an analysis of the progess on liberalising the tangled web of bilateral agreements underpinning the industry. |
Source: Airline Business
