Arab carriers are stressing the need for a regulatory environment with greater commonality, which operates on a regional rather than national level.
The carriers believe that the lack of a suitable constitutional framework creates long delays and that regulatory change is slow unless development is based on national decisions and national agendas.
Speaking during the Arab Air Carriers Organisation (AACO) general meeting in Damascus last week, AACO secretary general Abdul Wahab Teffaha highlighted the fact that some Arab states, notably Morocco, had proceeded with regulatory evolution through discussions with the European Union.
But he added: "The problem in the development of the Arab regulatory environment on the levels of market access and privatisation is that we follow the European experience - which is an effective example - but without the constitutional and legal tools that paved the way for it.
"Absence of these tools will always lead to a significant time-lapse between Arab political decisions and their application on the collective Arab level, at a time when resolutions on the national level advance towards implementation with relative speed."
He says that Arab carriers need to have an open regulatory environment to take advantage of the full air transport potential of the Middle East region.
"Continued absence of such tools and the adoption by Arab states of the regulatory environment development on national agendas only will lead to diverse environments and a fragmentation of policies, which would preclude the presence of a coherent Arab regulatory environment in the foreseeable future."
Source: Flight International