ABSTRACT
The time has come to offer the aviation industry a new regulatory framework, similar to those of other mature industrial sectors that benefit from a global and liberal market. Cross-border investments, through international M&As, are presently occurring in all sectors, and are particularly characteristic of service sectors that, as a result of regulatory reform, have seen the privatization and liberalization of trade and investment regimes and are now able to restructure more freely at both national and intemationallevels. Unlike mergers in the past, mergers are currently motivated by the desire to consolidate the capacity to serve global markets and fully benefit from economies of scale. The airline industry should benefit from the same liberal environment; it is no longer an infant industry and should leave the restrictive bilateral system that has served the industry for 50 years, in order to gain more global strength. The main objective of this book was to identify the factors that still justify the imposition of national ownership restrictions on airlines; the present analysis demonstrated that none of the legal and economic reasons used justify these restrictions any longer. So far, a protectionist policy has prevailed in fact in several States, such as the US, probably to the detriment of the airline industry itself. Today, the only tenable reason for keeping national airline ownership restrictions is the national security concern; however, this issue can be resolved separately from the airline ownership and control issue. Accordingly, removal of foreign ownership restrictions should be a matter of priority for the respective national authorities worldwide, since it would play a paramount role in the future global consolidation of airlines and would be an important step towards the normalization of the industry.
