The Research On European Airspace Integration Process

More than ten years ago, Europe was confronted with an airspace issue plaguing China today, that is, low efficiency of airspace management due to fragmentation. However, nowadays Europe has improved the efficacy of its airspace management through airspace integration. In-depth and systematic research of the European airspace integration will be beneficial for the development of the solutions to the present Chinese airspace issue. This dissertation deals with three questions including "where is the intrinsic drive for the European airspace integration?", "How is the European airspace integration process formulated?", and "How is the European airspace integration process reinforced?", after decipher the policy network, patch selection and interest sharing mechanism of European airspace management, by means of policy network, Europeanization pattern and interest stakeholder theories.This paper is composed of 7 parts. The first chapter gives an brief introduction into the theories, logic, and analytical methods employed throughout. The second one makes an explanation of the ideas of airspace management, air traffic management, and "the Single European Sky", and thereafter proceeding on to a brief overview of policy network, interest stakeholder, Europeanization pattern theory. The third chapter briefly reviews the process of the European airspace integration. The fourth part utilizes the policy network theory and interest stakeholder theory to analyze the policy network structure of European airspace management. The fifth component delivers insight into the path set and logic. The sixth part discusses about the effect of interest augment of the European airspace integration. Finally, drawing on the experience of the European airspace integration, the proposal to the Chinese airspace management issue is offered.The author hopes this paper will help to deepen the understanding of the important role of the policy network in the European airspace management arena. By the efforts of generalization, the author also want to make it explicit that there is more than one path in the process of the European airspace integration, whereas there are three interweaving paths, namely, regulatory integration, structural integration, and latent integration. The dissertation strengthens the proposals that Chinese airspace reform should be implemented in aspects of legal framework, management setup, performance evaluation, and incentive mechanism, through employing comprehensive qualitative analysis method.