Book reviews

摘要

The four books reviewed here are recent additions to the Ash-gate Aviation Series, which tends to comprise rather specialist texts addressing a wide range of aviation-specific topics concerned with issues such as: aviation management; aviation business and economics; human factors; and systems and operations. The series is currently being marketed under what is perhaps a rather ambiguous slogan: 'No simple solutions but some shrewd insights'. If a general criticism can be made of the series as a whole, it is that aviation is 'ring-fenced' rather than grounded in the broader terms that might concern transport geographers interested, perhaps, in the ways in which transport interconnects with other political, social, cultural and economic policy realms, with behavioural characteristics of practitioners and consumers, and with other geographies. Absent, too, is a sustained critical dimension that might question the wider import of air transport.rnMartin Bartlik's analysis of the impact of European Union (EU) law on the regulation of international air transportation deals first with the repercussions of EU so-called 'Open Skies' accords from the particular perspective of the division in competence between the EU and Member States in the regulation of air transport. He then moves on to consider the consequences of and problems emanating from the distribution of air traffic rights within the EU. While these are issues of importance and the book presents a sound international comparative context for the EU as well as being a useful source of legal reference, it is of limited appeal to non-practitioners, particularly given that it is often rather difficult to understand the text which would benefit from a brisk copy-editing.