The Effects of the EU-US Open Skies Agreement on Passenger Number between the United Kingdom and the United States

• Main Author: Dong, Andy
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: CrossWorks 2017
• Subjects: Economics; North Atlantic
• Online Access: https://crossworks.holycross.edu/econ_honor/5; https://crossworks.holycross.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1004&context=econ_honor

International civil aviation has been one of the most regulated industries. Since the 1970s however, the airline industry has been gradually liberalized, with domestic deregulations taking place in the United States, Japan, and other relatively developed parts of the world. The United States and the European Union signed the EU-US Open Skies Agreement in 2007. This agreement, which took effect in March 2008, liberalized the airline industry in the North Atlantic. This research aims to find the effect of the EU-US Open Skies Agreement on the number of passengers flying between the United Kingdom and the United States. I find that the open skies agreement did indeed increase passenger traffic between the United States and the United Kingdom by an economically significant margin. This finding helps demonstrate the positive impact on civil aviation of international bilateral liberalization treaties.