Open skies is an international policy concept which calls for the liberalization of rules and regulations on international aviation industry most specially commercial aviation - opening a free market for the airline industry. Its primary objectives are:
For open skies to effect, a bilateral (and sometimes multilateral) Air Transport Agreement has to be concluded between two or more nations.
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To achieve sovereignty, a state must be recognised as having both de facto and de jure control over all the land, sea and air space within defined territorial boundaries. Once a state comes into being, the concept of trespass applies to any part of the state entered without permission. Hence, whether it is an individual wishing to cross a land border, a ship aiming to enter or pass through territorial waters, or an aircraft seeking to overfly, prior consent is required. Those who do not seek permission will, at the very least, be liable to arrest and prosecution by the offended state. At worst, entry may be considered an act of war. For example, in 1983, Korean Air Flight 007 strayed into Soviet air space and was shot down.
Since World War II, most states have invested national pride in the creation and defence of airlines (sometimes called flag carriers or legacy airlines). Air transportation differs from many other forms of commerce, not only because it has a major international component, but also because many of these airlines were wholly or partly government owned. Thus, as international competition grew, various degrees of protectionism were imposed.
A bilateral air transport agreement is a contract to liberalize aviation services, usually commercial civil aviation, between two contracting states. A bilateral air services agreement allows the airlines of both states to launch commercial flights that covers the transport of passengers and cargoes of both countries. A bilateral agreement may sometimes include the transport of military personnel of the contracting states.
In a bilateral agreement, the contracting states may allow the airlines of the contracting parties to bring passengers and cargoes to a third country or pick up passengers and cargoes from the host country to the home country of the airline or to a third country in which the contracting states has existing open skies agreement.
A multilateral air services agreement is the same as bilateral agreement, the only difference is that it involves more than two contracting states.
The Convention on International Civil Aviation (1944), signed at Chicago (Also called the Chicago Convention), was intended to prepare a framework within which civil air transport could develop (not military or other state activities whether in a piloted or drone craft). It introduced nine freedoms of the air for those states that have adopted the Convention and enter into bilateral treaties that may grant any of the following rights or privileges for scheduled international air services:
Because only the first five "freedoms" have been officially recognised by international treaties, the ICAO considers the remaining "freedoms" "so-called".
The last twenty-five years have seen significant changes in airline regulation. The U.S. began pursuing Open Skies agreements in 1979 and, by 1982, it had signed twenty-three bilateral air service agreements worldwide, mainly with smaller nations. That was followed in the 1990s by agreements with some individual European states.
A huge step was taken in 1992 when the Netherlands signed the first open skies agreement with the United States, in spite of objections posited by European Union authorities. The agreement gave both countries unrestricted landing rights on each others' soil. Normally landing rights are granted for a fixed number of flights per week to a fixed destination. Each adjustment takes a lot of negotiating, often between governments rather than between the companies involved. The United States was so pleased with the independent position that the Dutch took versus the EU that it granted anti-trust immunity to the alliance between Northwest Airlines and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines which started in 1989 (when Northwest and KLM agreed to code sharing on a large scale) and which actually is the first large alliance still functioning. Other alliances would struggle for years to overcome transnational barriers or still do so.
In 2001 the United States signed the Multilateral Agreement on the Liberalization of International Air Transportation (MALIAT) with Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore. The U.S. has enjoyed a powerful negotiating position but the European Commission, as a supranational body, negotiated with the United States government on a community Air Service Agreement. These negotiations led to the text of an agreement being initialed on 2 March 2007. Contending issues are
The EU-US Open Skies Agreement was amongst one of the most significant open skies agreements concluded in recent years, covering civil aviation traffic between two of the world's three biggest markets. The Asian market, considered one of the fastest growing, remains relatively regulated at present,[1] although the phased introduction of the ASEAN open skies agreement covering ten countries in Southeast Asia from 2008 has prompted major Asian markets (including Japan,[2] China and India[3]) to consider similar initiatives.
The ASEAN Multilateral Agreement on Air Services and the ASEAN Multilateral Agreement on the Full Liberalisation of Air Freight Services which were simultaneously approved on May 20, 2009 in Manila, Philippines, are multilateral air transport agreements among the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations. These two agreements which took effect January 1, 2010, call for a calibrated and gradual implementation in each contracting state, to allow countries with less developed airline industry to cope up with more developed ones. It is part of the broader ASEAN Air Transport Integration and Liberalization Plan.
Most of the existing civil agreements include:
The Treaty on Open Skies, signed in Helsinki (1992), is a multinational sacrifice of air sovereignty to enhance military transparency and build confidence by permitting observation flights over almost the full territory of each signatory state:
To illustrate the scope of the Treaty, Germany and Italy have to accept 12 overflights per year, while Russia (including Belarus) and the U.S. must permit 42 overflights each.
There is also a bilateral Open Skies Agreement between Hungary and Romania. In a tacit but persistent way, the United States has been promoting the idea of bilateral or trilateral Open Skies arrangements between states in South America. Similarly, there are many bilateral treaties and Memoranda of Understanding that permit military aircraft mutually to train in or transit through their airspace. For example, Singapore has such arrangements with the U.S., France and Australia.