Concluding Remarks. This chapter explored whether multiple concepts related to slot coordination offer scope for finding solutions for the specific issues experienced at super-congested airports relating to this dissertation’s research questions, primarily in the field of reflecting the public value associated with slots in coordination decisions and safeguarding airport access for the purposes of a competitive air transport market safeguarded by EU Regulation 1008/2008. The concepts discussed include the debate on who holds the legal title to a slot, the functionally and financially independent coordinator, the application of the new entrant rule, the implementation of a secondary market for slots and the relationship between the allocation of slots and competition law. In my view, slots are allocated to airlines as entitlements to use available infrastructure, subject to conditions such as utilization thresholds or allocation criteria. Indeed, they represent relevant operational, economic, legal and social interests and functions.1342 Inter alia, according to the Commission, slots are “critical inputs” for any entrant wishing to operate or expand services.1343 Although airlines, airports and governments alike have claimed they should be regarded as the legal owners of slots,1344 they cannot, in my view, be identified as property rights. At super-congested airports in particular, slots are valuable concepts to society at large as they safeguard public functions such as connectivity and airport access, as discussed in Chapter 2, sections 2.3 and 2.4. Accordingly, Chapter 6 recommends that the coordinator should ensure that scarce slots are declared, allocated and used in a way that is reflective of these public functions. Solving the debate on slot ownership by clarifying that slots are essentially public goods could contribute to making this recommendation work. Furthermore, a future slot regime should be cognizant of the shifted role of the coordinator from performing merely technical functions to that of a policymaker, so to say. At super-congested airports, slot allocation ultimately comes down to making decisions which airlines can and cannot operate to and from an airport.1345 With slot scarcity levels and the risk of judicial reviews of allocation decisions rising, coordinators play an increasingly important role in the correct application of the slot allocation rules. After all, airlines are all in the same ‘game’ for the last available slot pair and the coordinator c...
Concluding Remarks. Since the pioneering work of [1], the question of what can be computed in a totally anonymous distributed systems has been extensively studied. Some results depended on prop- erties of the communication graph (e.g. [4, 22]). Some work considered shared memory for the “wake up” problem [12], others considered consensus [3]. The power of anonymous broadcast systems, in comparison with anonymous shared- memory systems has also been studied [2]. None of these considered process failures. Anonymous processes with crash failures have been considered more recently [5,6,8,11,16,19]. In [15], Byzantine agreement was studied in a model with a restricted kind of anonymity: processes have no identi- fiers, but each process has a separate channel to every other process and a process can detect through which channel an incoming message is delivered. It was shown that Byzantine agreement can be solved in this model when n > 3t. This paper is the first to study a distributed system model with homonyms, i.e., with a limited number of identifiers. The model unifies both classical (non-anonymous) and anony- mous models and is interesting from both a theoretical and a practical viewpoint. We completely characterized the solv- ability of Byzantine agreement in this model, precisely quan- tifying the impact of the adversary, with some surprising results. We focused however on agreement and many other problems would be interesting to consider. We also focused on computability and complexity is yet to be explored.
Concluding Remarks. Although slots represent relevant operational, economic, legal and social interests,1051 they cannot, in my view, be identified as property rights.1052 Pursuant to the EU, US and industry definitions of an airport slot, slots are entitlements allocated at no cost to airlines twice yearly to land at and take-off from international airports and use the full range of airport facilities, subject to conditions such as utilization thresholds.1053 By no means do the available definitions explicitly state that airlines own slots in terms of being able to legally claim slots as property rights, which would give an unequivocal right of ownership to the airline.1054 Slots may have been allocated to airlines according to which airlines are entitled to use those slots, but that does not mean that airlines are entitled to consider slots as their property. The FAA even legally established that slots can be withdrawn if and when the FAA deems it appropriate, as discussed in section 5.2.3 above. 1049 See Xxxxxxxxx, supra note 10, at 12. Slot trade and lease agreements are subject to discussion in section 5.6 below as alternative ways to access congested airports. 1050 See Xxxxxxx X. Xxxxx, A Political Theory of the Origin of Property Rights: Airport Slots, 35 Political Science 4 (2008), at 951. 1051 See European Commission, supra note 54, paragraph 11. 1052 See Abeyratne, supra note 55, at 36. 1053 The WASG and the EU by word of “permission to use”, the US by word of “operating privilege”. Both terms appear appropriate to label the entitlement that comes with an allocated slot, see section 5.2.3 for further analysis. See also Xxxxx Xxxxxx Xxxxxx, supra note 69, at 141. 1054 See Abeyratne, supra note 55, at 36. In the view of the author, the fact that slots have been treated as part of the possessions of an airline in take-overs is ill-considered. After all, due to their public functions as discussed in Chapter 2, sections 2.3 and 2.4, slots are valuable resources to society at large for which ‘competition’ among airlines is fierce, in particular at super-congested airports. Although both airports and airlines may have invested heavily in airport infrastructure and aircraft and network expansion respectively, the beneficiary of a slot should not be determined on the basis of financial objectives of an airline or an airport. Instead of allowing private enterprises property rights over slots, which implies that slots may be used, exchanged and transferred as the owner deems f...
Concluding Remarks. The financial default of airlines raised a number of delicate issues linked to the debate on slot title, including whether it is legally possible to prevent the so-called ‘freezing’ of slots held by these carriers until the financial difficulties have been overcome, meanwhile blocking the efficient use of declared capacity. The current slot rules do not provide much guidance on this 1079 See Xxxxxxxx, supra note 46, at 39. 1080 See Xxxxxxx and Xxxxx, supra note 276, at 23. 1081 See NERA Economic Consulting, supra note 5, at 255. 1082 See Xxxxxx de Xxxx, supra note 48, at 571. 1083 See United States Securities and Exchange Commission, Form 10-K: American Airlines Group Inc., available at xxxxx://xxx.xxx.xxx/Archives/xxxxx/data/4515/000119312516474605/d78287d10k.htm (last visited: November 12, 2021). 1084 See Xxxx XxxXxxxxx(II), supra note 113, at 120. 1085 See Xxxxx Xxxxxx Xxxxxx, supra note 69, at 278. 1086 See Air Canada, 2020 Annual Report (2021). 1087 See Xxxxxxx and Xxxxx, supra note 276, at 26; Xxxx XxxXxxxxx, supra note 63, at 10-15. 1088 See ACL, supra note 118, at 21. matter, and bankruptcy laws and policies vary from State to State, also in the EU. Leaving slot coordination to the whims of national bankruptcy regimes for extensive periods of time, and often outside of the view of the coordinator, seems ill-considered at the least, given that the WASG presume an open, fair and transparent allocation of scarce capacity by an independent slot coordinator for the benefit of all parties involved.1089 Moreover, it may erode the coordinator’s independent function in the performance of their exclusively assigned duties as capacity allocator as per Article 4(5) of the Slot Regulation. It appears that the absence of specific rules addressing the legal position of slots in bankruptcy proceedings, including any next steps including timeframes may be reflective of the period in which the WASG and the Slot Regulation were developed. The drafters of the WASG and the Slot Regulation may not have approached the issue of financial restructuring as one of much concern at the time, as demand for air transport was characterized by growth and available airport capacity was plentiful. The drafters appear to have been more focused on promoting the development of scheduling consistency and networks rather than competitiveness or on the situation of airlines affected by financial default. Both instruments apparently did not presume that slot capacity scarcity was here to s...
Concluding Remarks. The exclusive responsibility for the allocation of slots at Level 3 airports is vested with the slot coordinator, who must ensure that slot allocation takes place through a system of fair, non- discriminatory and transparent rules so as to ensure optimal utilization of airport capacity according to both the WASG and the Slot Regulation.1115 A vital degree of flexibility and discretion is therefore imperative when it comes to the interpretation and application of the slot regime and will enable the coordinator to respond to ever-changing market realities, specifically as local situations differ and may therefore require different solutions as discussed in Chapter 2, sections 2 3. and 2.4.
Concluding Remarks. At first glance, the new entrant rule appears to make congested airports more accessible for smaller competitors. Nonetheless, this favorable scenario depends in its entirety on the effective availability of slots to accord new entrant priority to.1142 Even where slots are available, it appears that the specific characteristics of the new entrant rule have reduced the ability of airlines with limited or modest slot holdings to effectively compete with larger airlines. Instead of spiking competitive entry, the new entrant rule may instead result in fragmented slot allocation outcomes to the benefit of the position of incumbent carriers.1143 Nonetheless, the specificities of the new entrant rule have not stopped the substantial overall growth of LCCs in the air transport market, which has occurred largely without assistance of the new entrant rule. Many LCCs have entered the market by other means. They have developed operations at secondary airports and have acquired slots through the secondary market, where applicable, which is subject to discussion in the next section.
Concluding Remarks. Secondary slot trading offers scope for airlines planning to access airports to expand or start new services where no slots are readily available from the pool. However, in effect, secondary slot trading takes away allocation decisions from the formal coordination system, of which the independent coordinator is the central part. Allocation decisions may become based on an airlines’ willingness to pay and the divesting xxxxxxx’s view of how it can best protect its competitive position at an airport, rather than based on an independent assessment undertaken by the coordinator of the fairest allocation outcome to ensure the most optimal distribution of slots at the airport concerned and the best outcome for consumer choice. Instead of stimulating airport access, secondary slot trading may result in the reverse effect of increasing slot shares on the side of already dominant carriers. All things considered, the pros and cons of secondary slot trading call for a careful and tailor-made approach. Although secondary slot trading offers an alternative means to access super-congested airports, the practice also offers scope for the reinforcement of the dominant position of already dominant airlines, which could potentially nullify the potential for smaller 1217 See OFT and CAA, supra note 72. 1218 See Xxxxxx and Xxxxxxxx, supra note 114. 1219 See Odoni, supra note 61, at 88-89; See Xxxxxxx et al., supra note 67, at 18; Xxxxx and Xxxxxxxx, supra note 194, at 34. 1220 See NERA Economic Consulting, supra note 5, at 65. 1221 See Xxxxxxxxxx and Xxxx, supra note 465. 1222 See Xxxxxxxx et al., supra note 13, at 57. 1223 See DotEcon Ltd., supra note 64, at 19. 1224 See Xxxxxxx et al., supra note 67, at 15. 1225 See Finger et al., supra note 18, at 4. 1226 See Xxxxxxx et al., supra note 67, at 10. 1227 See Xxxxxxx et al., supra note 67, at 5. or medium-sized carriers to expand or start new services and gain competitive foothold at super-congested airports. Hence, Chapter 6 recommends that the implementation of secondary slot trading, if at all, should be paired with clear rules and conditions to avoid adverse impacts on capacity utilization, the public interest and, especially relevant to this dissertation: airport access. Another way to access a super-congested airport in the EU is through the use of ‘remedy slots’ made available based on concerns in the field of competition law, as to which see section 5.7.2 below. Section 5.7.1 reflects on the relationship between slots ...
Concluding Remarks. The lack of slots at (super-)congested airports constitutes the main barrier to entry in the air transport industry.1333 The current slot rules strived to have ex ante effect in deterring growing slot shares of already dominant carriers for example through the introduction of the new entrant rule, as discussed in section 5.5 above.1334 The above clarifications in this section demonstrate that there is also a relationship between the role of the general competition law regime in the EU, specifically Articles 101 and 102 TFEU and the Merger Regulation, and the special regime on slot allocation.1335 It is questionable whether Articles 101 and 102 TFEU apply to the conduct of airlines in relation to slots, particularly since there is not yet a market for slots at airports where secondary slot trading is not permitted. The mere holding of a large slot portfolio by airlines does not in itself confer a position of dominance, which is also abused, upon an airline under Article 102 TFEU. After all, a concentrated market is not necessarily the same as a market with low competition levels, and it does not per se lead to the abuse of market power.1336 Nonetheless, the Commission may make its approval of, inter alia, airline mergers and alliances subject to the divestiture of slots where slots remain concentrated with an incumbent carrier at the route or airport level. Since slots can ensure competitive advantage, the rationale behind slot commitments under the Merger Regulation is to ease market access at congested airports. As Xxxxxx de Xxxx (2013)1337 put it, “slots are multi-faceted instruments which serve as remedies for congested airports and in competition and alliances cases.” 1338 Although slot commitments may form a relative improvement with regard to enhancing airport access for competitive entry, they may not offer structural solutions. Slot commitments have had mixed success, as the slots that were made available under the commitments have not always attracted long-term competition.1339 This somewhat modest contribution to the objective of attracting new competitors in a defined market for the operation of air services has led the Commission’s approach to remedial commitments to evolve considerably over the years.1340 For instance, the airport-by airport-approach has become more prevalent, as evidenced by Lufthansa’s acquisition of Air Berlin and the Lufthansa State aid case, which may pave the way for future cases related to instances of slot concentratio...
Concluding Remarks. We have considered the model of information-theoretic key agreement by public discussion from correlated information. More precisely, we have compared sce- narios where the joint information is given by classical random variables and by quantum states (e.g., after execution of a quantum protocol). We proved a close connection between such classical and quantum information, namely between intrinsic information and entanglement. As an application, the derived parallels lead to an efficiently verifiable criterion for the fact that the intrinsic information vanishes. Previously, this quantity was considered to be quite hard to handle. Furthermore, we have presented examples providing evidence for the fact that the close connections between classical and quantum information extend to the level of the protocols. A consequence would be that the powerful tools and statements on the existence or rather non-existence of quantum-privacy- amplification protocols immediately carry over to the classical scenario, where it is often unclear how to show that no protocol exists. Many examples (only some of which are presented above due to space limitations) coming from measuring bound entangled states, and for which none of the known classical secret-key agreement protocols is successful, strongly suggest that bound entanglement has a classical counterpart: intrinsic information which cannot be distilled to a secret key. This stands in sharp contrast to what was previously believed about classical key agreement. We state as an open problem to rigorously prove Conjectures 1 and 2. Finally, we have proposed a measure for entanglement, based on classical information theory, with all the properties required for such a measure.
Concluding Remarks. We identified a pattern in the development of online banking that seems to rely on three phases, each relating to both technological and adoption trends. In the early adoption phase, banks offer a technologically crude way to conduct online banking that is expensive and not available for everyone. Availability and popularity of online banking increase in the following expansion phase, in which users start to accept online banking because critical aspects are perceived as being satisfactory. Finally, the exploitation phase relies on standardized technologies to make online banking available to almost anyone. The three phases are identified in the development of home banking (using a “desktop” computer), and the first two phases can also be identified in the development of mobile banking (using a mobile device anywhere an internet connection is available). Based on the identified trend, we predict that mobile banking has yet to enter the exploitation phase. In this predicted third phase, Hybrid Mobile Applications that are based mostly on standard web technologies will likely be introduced to reduce the costs of supporting multiple platforms and form factors. For mobile banking, this opens up opportunities for new kinds of scalable malware attacks that are similar to attacks made against home banking. Security is an important aspect in online banking. For home banking, we examined 80 banks worldwide on how they authenticate their customers and how they implemented communications security. We also examined the implemented authentication methods for mobile banking at 66 banks. For user to bank authentication, 75% of the banks offer an authentication method that relies on multiple factors (what the user knows and possesses) for home banking. The possible use of multiple factors was found in 59% of mobile applications and 25% of mobile sites. The adoption of multifactor authentication in both home and mobile banking increased slightly in a 2 year period, and seems to be most absent in North America. While there is not much diversity in the used knowledge factor (either password or PIN), different regions have different preferences for the possession factor. Noteworthy are the wide embrace of offline electronic devices used to generate login credentials in Africa, Europe, and Oceania, and the popularity of a one-time password distributed on paper or plastic in South America. Different possession factors are also used in mobile banking. Use of the mobile device it...
