صنعت هوانوردی ایران ، از فراز تا فرود
صنعت حمل و نقل هوایی ایران از صنعت فرودگاهی تا صنعت هواپیماییصنعت هوانوردی ایران ، از فراز تا فرود
صنعت حمل و نقل هوایی ایران از صنعت فرودگاهی تا صنعت هواپیماییاکنون زمان آزادسازی خطوط هوایی جهان است
Aviation liberalisation
Open the skies
Now is the time to set the world's airlines free
IT IS a striking paradox that the aviation industry, which has done so much to help create a global economy, is itself stuck in a mercantilist past dominated by national pride and special interests. Sure, shiny planes fly everywhere, looking the very symbol of modernity. But the structure of the industry and the way it operates have largely been dictated by a web of government rules more appropriate to the 16th century than the 21st. For the past 60 years, air travel has been governed by inter-governmental deals which dictate which airlines can fly where, how many seats they can offer and even, in many cases, what fares they can charge. The result has been inefficiency, financial losses and forgone consumer benefits.
This week the European Union and America began negotiations about overhauling the agreements which entangle air traffic across the Atlantic (see article). The talks are a golden opportunity to free, at last, not just their airline industries, but the world's. After years of empty rhetoric about “open skies”, both America and the EU should finally dismantle this costly and anachronistic system. Together they account for half of all air travel. So if they act boldly enough, most other countries would be likely to follow.
The industry's current plight is dire. It has been battered by terrorism, economic slowdown, war fears and the SARS epidemic, as well as heavy-handed regulation. Total airline losses are expected to reach as much as $10 billion this year. So this may seem like a strange time for radical deregulation. But such a crisis is often the most effective trigger for fundamental reform. Aviation desperately needs to be freed from government constraints, to cope with the many storms it inevitably encounters, as well as to find the best way to serve passengers. As a whole the industry has never returned the full cost of its capital—in other words, it has regularly destroyed more wealth than it has created, a damning indictment of the government meddling which has bedevilled it for so long.
This is a shame, because the industry clearly does not suffer from any lack of entrepreneurial spirit. Domestic deregulation in the United States and Europe produced an explosion of low-cost carriers and clever new strategies. In both cases these created new routes, more passenger traffic and lower fares. It seems certain that international deregulation would yield the same result. Even Europe's remaining state-owned carriers, long coddled by subsidies and regulation, have been straining at the leash, using lean, internet-based booking techniques learned from low-cost upstarts and struggling to circumvent government rules in order to strike cross-border alliances or quasi-mergers, as Air France and KLM have done this week.
