ABSTRACT
When the year 2000 dawned, a salutary trend in South American air transport was the move towards ‘open skies’ with the United States. This millennium trend, which saw 12 states in South America signing such agreements up to January 2000, and having more in the offing, augurs more competitive activity for the airlines of the region and stimulation of market growth. As an example, Mexico, which is the closest Latin American partner having a common border with the United States, is claimed to have generated an income of 8 billion US dollars from tourist arrivals in 1999, with a tourism-promotion budget of 80 million.1 South America’s sustained effort at initiating openskies agreements is arguably an enthusiastic response of the South American region to spur sagging traffic figures of tourist arrivals originating from the United States. Statistics have shown that traffic from Europe to South America far outweigh traffic generated by the North American neighbours, especially the United States.2
