Open Skies Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Open Skies - Essay Example The modern aviation sector has grown considerably in the past few decades and its emerging commercial perspective has led most people to question whether there should be more intergovernmental efforts and co-operation to respond to the new business environment. Air transport services have experienced the most dynamic recent growth of all sectors in the vitally important transport industry. With regards to the Open Skies Policy it has to be noted that Air transport is crucial to international trade.Eversice the year 1944(under the auspices of the Chicago Conference of 1944) it has been under a complex regulatory system . Overall there are little if any international agreements in this regard and so far the position has been that there have been a lot of bilateral agreements between countries dominating the aviation industry ever since. The success of these open skies agreements depends to a large extent upon the political relationships between countries.Few countries would want to see a rival country save fuel and expenses and attract more tourists and consumers at the cost of its own AirSpace.Therefore even though over the past few decades the some relaxation has taken place in a few countries, Commercial flights are still subject to heavy regulations on their air routes and subject to almost three thousand forms of Bilateral Agreements.This is particularly true with regards to the Pacific regions that poses a great challenges in providing basic transport services in terms of routes and fares.The use of such agreements would indeed eradicate the varying levels of infrastructure development, the high costs and other related problems in this sector.This is because all commercial carriers are facing diseconomies of scale due to not being able to use their air planes to their full potential and are facing increasingl y difficult conditions with competition putting pressure on fares, especially in traditional tourism markets. The cost of fuel and maintenance, and professional staff means that Air services to destinations outside the Pacific and other favourite tourist destinations will be have a volume tourist traffic which will demands long-haul direct routes and larger planes.Economically therefore ,the lack of an open skies agreement could cause a world wide crisis in the arena of the commercial airlines and eventually lead to high costs even for the short-haul services to island neighbours and airlines can be reluctant to make intermediate stopovers. The matter therefore is not economical or legal.The issue is purely political.Consider the tug of war that took place between EU and USA authorities over the recent Open Skies Agreement.The Agreement aims to liberalise transatlantic airspace yet European transport Ministers were reluctant to agree to it at first as they felt it gave the US an unfair advantage over European interests and its major airline and cargo.This was expressed in a statement by the EU commission which remarked that many Member States felt "that EU airlines should have more opportunities to access the