92 LEGAL IMPACTS OF COVID-19 IN THE TOURISM INDUSTRY The degree and direction of change can be monitored on a day-to-day basis. More difficult is to predict what will come after the dust settles. We know where we have come from and what has happened since, the question is: where will we go from here? In a recent edition of the Aviation Intelligence Reporter – a monthly aviation trade publication –, Aviation Advocacy elaborated four scenarios, ranging from forward-looking and utopian to backward-looking and dystopian4. The first scenario is business as usual – a “nothing to see here, please move along” mentality that we can just pick up where we left off. The second scenario is that some change will come – an attempt to keep the current legal and regulatory system with adaptations to the new environment. The third scenario, in some ways the most likely, is a return to the legal and regulatory scheme of yore – government owned and operated airlines providing essential services. Finally, the fourth scenario is the possibility for a blank slate – rethinking the aviation industry from the ground up. The four scenarios are based upon the historical development of the laws, regulations and policies affecting the aviation industry. So, to grasp why one or more of these scenarios is more likely than others to prevail, we first look to the evolution of international air transport to identify the bedrock and, perhaps unfortunately, immutable the principles around which the new normal will be built. 2. LEGAL FOUNDATIONS OF AVIATION From the earliest days of aviation – even before the invention of the airplane –, law and policy for aviation have been circumscribed by national security and sovereignty. The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 addressed conduct during warfare and contained provisions, dealing with the discharge of projectiles from balloons. The first multilateral conference concerning international aviation, held in Paris in 1910, featured debates over national sovereignty5 – should national airspace be treated like the high seas, open to all, or should States be permitted to control who enters their airspaces? That question was settled during World War I, during which national laws appeared 4 Aviation Advocacy, Aviation Intelligence Reporter (April 2020) https://www.aviationadvocacy.aero/services /word/the-aviation-intelligence-reporter/. 5 John Cobb Cooper, “The International Air Navigation Conference, Paris 1910” in Ivan A. Vlasic, ed., Explorations in Aerospace Law: Selected Essays by John Cobb Cooper, 1946-1966 (Montreal: McGill University Press, 1968), 106-109.
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