The air transport community went into last month's ICAO High Level Meeting on the environment in a rare state of unity behind a set of proposals with which it hoped to seize the high ground and first-mover status in the debate over the industry's responsibility toward reducing its greenhouse gas emissions.

No small irony attaches to the fact that as the World Trade Organization was releasing its preliminary findings on its investigation into European state aid for Airbus, China was unveiling detailed plans for its proposed C919, the state-developed 150-seat transport with which it hopes to challenge Airbus and Boeing by the middle of the next decade.

Showing an uncanny ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, US airlines finally may have made inevitable the enactment of an airline passenger bill of rights requiring them to permit passengers to disembark from aircraft stuck in extended tarmac delays or to compensate customers for their lost time when such events occur.

The world's airlines--with a few exceptions--must have breathed a sigh of relief on July 10 when the US Dept. of Transportation overrode the objections of the Dept. of Justice and approved antitrust immunity for Continental Airlines' membership in Star Alliance and Atlantic Plus Plus, the proposed joint venture subset of Air Canada, Lufthansa, United Airlines and Continental.

As our World Airline Report (beginning on p. 24) makes clear, the past 12 months have not been kind to commercial air transport. ICAO has estimated that the scheduled airline industry posted an operating loss of $9.6 billion in 2008, or $3.8 billion if fuel hedges are excluded, while IATA puts the net loss at $10.4 billion and expects a further $9 billion in red ink this year.

Not so long ago, the air transport industry faced a serious dilemma. The rapid growth in air travel in the early 1990s meant that absent a step-change improvement in safety, the industry could reach a point where it sustained one fatal accident per week. Of course such a situation never would have been permitted to develop. No government or regulatory authority could have tolerated it and so aviation growth would have been curtailed, with all this entailed for its ability to continue playing a vital role in a growing global economy.

Eight months after equal measures of recklessness, stupidity, greed, market ignorance and political meddling resulted in an economic meltdown that has led to a trillion dollars in taxpayer bailouts, the highest US jobless rate in 30 years and the loss of billions of dollars of retirement savings, it's comforting to know that some politicians in Washington are firmly focused on writing new regulations to protect consumers from . . . the airline industry.

The guilty verdict and a two-year jail sentence handed down in early April to Capt. Marwoto Komar, the pilot-in-command of Garuda Flight GA200, a 737-400 that crashed at Yogyakarta, Indonesia, on March 7, 2007, killing 21, has become the case du jour in the continuing debate regarding criminal action against flight crews involved in airline accidents.