Comprehensive article on air services liberalisation published in Airline Business

On 22 April 2010 FlightGlobal published a comprehensive article from Airline Business by David Knibb entitled Liberalisation: Breaking the bilateral web on progress on air services liberalisation.

The article would have benefited by also examining the research work done by the World Trade Organization in this area.

Unfortunately the Knibb article is spoilt by some factual inaccuracies concerning developments in the South West Pacific.

"MALIAT remains open for others to join, but none have."

Actually, although they are not major, four other countries have joined: the Cook Islands, Samoa and Tonga and Mongolia (cargo only)(see http://www.maliat.govt.nz/country/index.shtml).

"A Pacific Islands Air Services Agreement and Single Caribbean Sky are still only proposals."

Actually the Pacific Islands Air Services Agreement (PIASA) has been in force since 13 October 2007 and this month Australia and New Zealand became eligible to join (see http://www.forumsec.org/pages.cfm/economic-governance/economic-growth-work-programme/aviation-1/aviation.html UPDATED).

I do not claim detailed knowledge of the current situation in the Caribbean but I am also left wondering what the relationship of the article reference to "Single Caribbean Sky" is to the agreement that came into force in 1998 (see previous post).