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This chapter reviews the history of regulation and deregulation in international air transport and discusses the positive impacts of deregulation and open skies on the tourism sector in the Asia Pacific region. The Hong Kong–Bangkok market was examined, which shows that the granting of the fifth freedom rights has given the two places sufficient air service provisions to build tourism. Future reforms in air transport such as relaxing ownership restrictions and expanding air freedoms rights are explored.

There are large differences in both speed and costs between the traffic modes road and air. Rail has not yet successfully offered services “faster than road but cheaper than air”, although there are technical, logistical and economical opportunities for competing with air for intra‐continental shipments and co‐operate for intercontinental ones. The article categorises segments of the European express freight market and analyses them in a rail perspective. Services between Sweden and Continental Europe and domestically in Sweden are focused. System modelling tools are also adapted to the application of express intermodal transport and prospective roles for rail in express transport are defined. The analysis shows that a transport chain with many actors and long distances does not necessarily entail longer transport times than a short‐distance with the same circumstances under a single management. The analysis also shows that many express transport systems are built in a modular way, implying that subsystems can be exchanged.

The purpose of this paper is to predict the likely economic effects of a free trade area (FTA) on both China and the United Kingdom (hereafter the UK).

Following literature review and trade relationship briefing, this paper uses the Global Trade Analysis Project simulation to predict the economic effects of such a FTA on both China and the UK.

The simulation results indicate that a China-UK free trade area (hereafter CUFTA) will bring more benefits than harm to both China and the UK, and achieving zero tariff or reducing technological barriers to trade (TBT) is mutually beneficial for both China and the UK, with the growth in GDP, economic welfare as well as import and export. Combining zero tariff and the reduction of TBT in exceptional departments is the most favorable way to improve the macroeconomic effects without bringing damaging effects on the comparative disadvantage industries such as transport equipment, chemicals industries for China and textiles and apparel industry for the UK.

After the UK voted to leave the European Union, CUFTA is put on the agenda by both the governments, yet there are fewer studies on CUFTA, with this paper being one of the early trials. Besides, based on the simulation results, some policy suggestions will be put forward for future negotiations and industrial policies’ adjustment.

The global COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the interconnectivity and interdependence of the modern world economy and international society’s epidemiological vulnerability to the global transmission of human infectious diseases by air travel. The rapid formulation of new pandemic policy responses for the air transport industry at both a national and international level revealed complex tensions between mandatory ‘stay-at-home’ public health interventions and international travel restrictions, which were designed to limit the virus’s spread but which dramatically disrupted everyday social activities, and political and economic imperatives to reopen global air travel as quickly as possible. The aim of this chapter is to examine the development of global policies for the air transport industry from the perspective of aviation public health policy, airline passengers, air freight and financial support for airline and airport operators.

As the land transport task, especially road is expected to increase significantly, by 2015, it would hardly be surprising that many policy makers will look to some form of urban transport environmental control long before this date. One method is via the introduction of a set of operational environmental hurdles. This is not a new concept. However, this paper proposes a new environmental initiative for urban transport operations. The scheme which is simple for both operators and regulators proposes an effective and meaningful operational rating system which reflects the efforts an operator may go to in their internal fleet environmental policies in purchasing equipment, daily workload planning, waste disposals policies etc.

The three tiered environmental operator performance rating scheme, the E-plus scheme has three levels of operator segmentation. A good basic auditable level of environmental compliance, an E rating, an excellent rating E plus, and an exceptional rating would be an E double plus. Probably no fleets currently in Australia would earn a double plus rating at this time.

Why should there be a road transport operator environmental rating scheme? Firstly as a measurable benchmark for the community and the fleet operators themselves. Secondly and a factor of growing importance is for the customers who are the buyers of freight services. Already customers are specifying in their tender requirements that transport operator environmental competencies and capabilities be listed. This may aid the selection of an operator for a specific task. For example; food sensitive freight handling may require specific food certification scheme adoption such as the HACCP classification system. Similarly an urban courier contract may specify, environmental credentials which sit under an ISO 14000 framework. However, what more specific operator differentiation criteria can be requested by the customer? The E plus system is being designed for this very purpose. In Australia some regulators and teaching centres have begun to take an interest in this transport operator framework.