Open Skies for airflight; Open markets for Canada; Social Media as an Enabler.
Airline and travellers’ groups are cheering a government plan to open up Canada’s skies to more competition, saying open-skies agreements with more countries will allow them to reach new markets and reduce ticket prices for consumers.Currently, Canada only has two open-skies agreements, with the United States and Britain, while the U.S. has 77 open-skies agreements, Australia three, Chile seven, New Zealand 10 and Singapore nine. The European Union has a complete open-skies regime.
Open skies agreements eliminate rules that dictate such things as how many air carriers are allowed from each market, what destinations they may serve, and how many times they may fly.
It hadn’t occurred to me why there were so few choices flying from Canada, so now I know: another example of Cosy Canadian business practices.
I am genuinely encouraged by this deregulation, and by Local Number Portability that Canada’s stuffy corporate culture may be eroding. I just hope it won’t take longer than it takes to sell off all the Canadian firms. After all, I’d played to stay here for a good while.
Perhaps if Canada’s companies gets enough signs that their markets are getting competitive, we’ll see competition here instead of price-fixing. It’ll take more than signs, of course, it will take some serious undercutting. Personally I’d welcome the day when retail prices in Canada come close to those in the US.