EU-U.S. Transatlantic Aviation Relations

The existing regulatory regime that governs the world's commercial aviation industry does not serve the interest of the airlines of the 21st century and is no longer adequate. Today's civil aviation is based on a regulatory system which was brought into existence at the 1944 Chicago Convention. Many airlines and governments around the world agree that it is time to break the bilateral web and let the airlines manage their own route network without the intervention of their respective governments. The EU/U.S. Open Skies Agreement is one of the most important efforts to achieve market liberalization in air transport. This work critically analyzes the main achievements of the second stage EU/U.S. agreement and explores the notion of ownership and control of airlines (the major barrier to the genuine globalization of the world's airline industry) from both a European and an American perspective and explains why it is such a difficult issue to agree on. The book also reviews the party's efforts that have taken place over the years to achieve market liberalization and proposes some possible alternatives to bypass the old fashioned regulatory framework created by the Chicago Convention.