About the blog

Evan Sparks’s Aviation Policy Blog provides informed analysis and unconventional wisdom on matters of aviation policy.

Aviation has the potential to be a vibrant industry, but it must interact with government at so many points — security, safety, air traffic control, regulation, ownership, route approval, airports, taxes and fees, retrograde nationalism — that sensible airline policy is necessary. But while there’s a lot of coverage of the business side of aviation, there’s very little available in the way of informed analysis and unconventional wisdom. That’s where the APB comes in. It is underpinned by a broadly free-market philosophy, and subscribes to these general principles:

• Deregulation makes aviation more dynamic, more customer-friendly, more accessible, more affordable, and better.
• Rent-seeking behavior by actors in the aviation business is not customer-friendly.
• Air travel must be safe and confidence-inspiring if it is to grow and thrive.
• Government should expand its capacities to support what airlines offer, not arbitrarily limit the growth of the industry for lack on innovation.

These core principles inform the posts at the APB. Most of all, the APB senses that many fliers still have a latent sense that flying should be sophisticated and exotic. Aviation policy should therefore create a framework that rewards the most innovative, dynamic, and exciting players — those which instill joy in flight.