Understanding ASEAN Air Transport Policy in the New Era : A New Interpretation of Regional Integration and Globalization

Integration of the skies has been attempted in regions beside the European Union, particularly in ASEAN and the African Union.Open skies policy is not a new idea and has been attempted and achieved on various scale.The ASEAN single aviation market is ASEANs attempt at integrating its sky, based on the freedoms of single market in an economic community.Scholars have for decades seek to fully understand the effects and implications of such multilateral air transport agreements.However, the existing theories of regional integration that are largely based on the study of Europes integration are inefficient and insufficient in providing clearer insights to the study of regional air integration.This study argues that the approach used by many studies of regional air integration, which uses the European Union as a benchmark for comparison does not realistically describe the rationale and effect of the various open skies policies of different regions.Therefore, this study seeks to reinterpret the existing theories of regional integration in order for a realistic understand of ASEANs integration of the skies.This study hope to achieve this by attempting to merge regional integration considerations across the ASEAN Single Aviation Market, reviewing aspects such as cultural, historical, political and societal factors.Cross-comparison with data from past pandemics and epidemics will also be conducted to gain insights about the relation between the changes in development of the air integration and the changes in effect from the current Covid-19 pandemic.Finally, this study seeks to also reinterpret the narrative of globalization by looking at the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic with respect to the insights gained from the understanding of ASEANs integration of the air.