ABSTRACT
Almost in parallel, in South America, several privatization programs were also implemented for liberalization of domestic markets and Australia and New Zealand soon followed the US movement (Button and Stough, 2000, pp. 59-83). Later, air transport issues also gained a position on the agenda of the Asian Pacific Economic Council (APEC), and in Japan the domestic airline All Nippon Airways was allowed to operate on international routes for the first time in 1986, by which time other companies had emerged in the Asian market, such as EVA Air in Taiwan, Asiana in South Korea, etc. (Doganis, 2001, p. 5). Button and Stough report how frantic the deregulation movements have been across the world in those decades:
By 1982, the US had signed 23 liberal air service agreements, mainly with smaller nations, in pursuit of its Open Skies agenda. This was followed in the 90s by a burst of agreements with European states including those with Switzerland, Luxembourg, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Belgium, Denmark, Finland and the Czech Republic in 1995, Jordan in 1998 and Singapore, Brunei, Taipei, Panama, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, New Zealand, Malaysia, Aruba, Chile, Romania and the Netherlands Antilles in 1997. More major agreements with the Netherlands and Germany came as a result of agreements on airline alliances between KLM and Northwest Airlines and Lufthansa and United Airlines, respectively.
