Aviation in Transition : Challenges and Opportunities of Liberalisation

ICAO Seminar, 22/23 March 2003

Liberalised Airline Ownership and Control

Barry HumphreysDirector, External Affairs & Route Development

Virgin Atlantic AirwaysChairman, IATA International Aviation Issues Task Force

Wright Brothers’ 1st Flight

Sir George Cayle (1796-1855)

• “About 100 years ago an Englishman, Sir George Cayley, carried the science of flying to a point which it had never reached before and which it surely reached again during the last century”

Wilbur Wright, 1909

• “The contributions to the science of flight made by Sir George Cayley seem to be the most radical, fundamental and original of any that have been recorded up to the present time by the promoters of mechanical flight”

A.F. Zahm (USA), 1913

• The aeroplane is a British invention: it was conceived in all essentials by George Cayley, the great English engineer who worked in the first half of the last century”

Charles Dollfus (France), 1923

• “Sir George Cayley, the real inventor of the aeroplane” Charles Dollfus and Henry Bouché (France), 1932

“Please, Sir George, I wish to give notice. I was hired to drive, and not to fly.”

Sir George Cayley’s coachman, 1853

• US Deregulation

• EU internal market

• Open Skies bilaterals

• Etc. etc.

• Restrictions on who may own and control a national airline

• The right of a country to refuse to accept the designation of an airline under a bilateral ASA if that airline is not majority owned and controlled by citizens of the country of designation.

Virgin Blue

IATA’s approach:

• Countries should not stand in the way of other countries adopting more liberal policies

• Any airline designated by a country should have an AOC from that country

Virgin Atlantic

Virgin Blue

Virgin Express