EMERGENT COMMERCIAL TRENDS AND AVIATION SAFETY
For Ayush, in hope
EMERGENT COMMERCIAL TRENDS AND AVIATION SAFETY
RUWANTISSA I.R. ABEYRATNE
First published 1999 by Ashgate Publishing
Reissued 2018 by Routledge
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Copyright Ruwantissa I.R. Abeyratne 1999
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Telecommunications, air transport and electronic data processing will be recognized as the landmark contributions of the twentieth century towards globalization. Among them, aviation has become an indivisible and vital part of the world economy and international interaction thanks to its ability to shrink intercontinental travel times for passengers and cargo to mere hours, whereas only two generations earlier, weeks or months were required.
International air navigation and air transport create a complex web of social relations on the global scale relations which require regulation to harmonize the conflicting social interests and to assure safe, orderly and economic air transport. Technology, politics and economic interests are closely interwoven in the regulatory web, and protectionist traditions compete with modern ideas of liberalization and globalization. Safety of flight is one of the commonly recognized maxims in air navigation, although the level of implementation of safety standards is not uniform among States at different stages of economic and technical development. While statistically aviation is by far the safest mode of transport, the complex technology and its demands on the controlling human element will never be able to completely avoid accidents; issues of liability require a modern, global regulatory framework and rejection of the antiquated current systems rooted in the infancy of aviation.
R.I.R. Abeyratne presents in this book a lucid, penetrating and original picture of the evolving concepts of traffic rights and the trends towards liberalization and globalization of air transport, competition and safeguards required to preserve the right of all States to operate an airline. He uses analytical and critical methods for his legal argument, and does so in remarkably simple and comprehensible language a gift rather rare in the legal profession. The strength of his analysis lies in his vision of the inter-relation of aviation economy and aviation safety, and his observations on international safety oversight and liability of air carriers are fully up to date and convincing.
R.I.R. Abeyratne is an exceptional aviation practitioner, scholar and prolific publicist who has to his credit numerous books and studies on air law and related disciplines. Educated as a lawyer at Colombo University, Sri Lanka, he received his postgraduate education (LLM degree) at Monash University, Australia, and McGill University, Canada; he obtained a doctoral degree in law from McGill University and from the University of Colombo, and has been honoured by membership of several learned societies. His practical experience stems from his earlier senior position with Air Lanka and his current position as a senior international civil servant in the Secretariat of ICAO in Montreal. The quality and usefulness of his publications is assured by his impressive knowledge of the inner workings of airlines, as well as of the wide international contexts and needs of the global aviation community.
This book will prove useful not only for lawyers, but also for the governments, airlines, economists, social scientists, politicians, journalists and the general public.
Professor Dr Michael Milde
Director
Institute of Air and Space Law
McGill University
Montreal
Canada
It is incontrovertible that the pre-eminent concern of the air transport industry and aircraft manufacturers at present is aviation safety. It is also the foremost priority of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which called an International Conference for Directors General of Civil Aviation World-wide in November 1997 to review ICAOs Safety Oversight Programme and to consider its expansion. The findings of this conference were being addressed by ICAO at the time of writing, and the strategic objective of the ICAO Strategic Action Plan, which was adopted by the ICAO Council on 7 February 1997, is to promote the safety, security and efficiency of international civil aviation.
This book discusses the factors which may compromise the safety of civil aviation, and analyses the regulatory process which has been formulated by ICAO and the regional civil aviation bodies AFCAC, ECAC and LACAC to address these concerns.
The rapid commercialization of air transport in recent times has had an inevitable impact on aviation safety. of this book traces the history of the Chicago Convention of 1944, which set some commercial goals, but failed to set other important ones. It then traces the fifty-year history of commercial aviation, and examines current commercial trends such as franchising of the airline product, outsourcing and the virtual airline, the millennium bug, and the use of smart cards in customs and immigration procedures as possible threats to aviation safety if they are overused.
seeks to draw together some general conclusions about the issues addressed in the book.
Strategic Alliances of Airlines
Todays commercial competition has transcended the past era, where dominant markets protected their established market shares. Most mega-commercial activity was then the purview of governmental control under instrumentalities of State which were mostly cumber-some bureaucracies at best. Perhaps the best analogy is the biggest commercial market the United States which had until recently extensively regulated larger commercial activities pertaining to energy, transportation and telecommunications.
Happily, over the past decade, commercial air carriers have broken the shackles of rigid regulation to form strategic alliances among themselves. These alliances have been formed as a result of the realization that the performance of an airline can be affected by two factors: the average performance of all competitors in the airline industry, and whether the airline concerned is a superior or inferior performer in the industry. Michael Porter1 encapsulates these two factors in the single premise that any business achieves superior profitability in its industry by attaining either higher prices or lower costs than rivals. Curiously, in the airline industry, it is the latter lower costs which has been the cornerstone of strategic alliances.
