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Open Skies agreement


Whofan

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I don't want to turn this into anything political, but I am interested enough in something I read about today concerning airline's concerns about Britain leaving the Open Skies Agreement. (OSA for short)

 

Am I right in thinking that should Britain no longer be in the OSA, would it interfere with just landing/takeoff rights, or would it mean restrictions on UK based airlines accessing EU airspace, with a reciprocal restriction on EU based airlines accessing British air space?

 

As an example, could it mean Ryanair having to fly south west out of Dublin to avoid UK air space, then south east over Spain and then north east to get to Paris?

 

Instead of, as present, presumably flying east/south east over The UK.

 

I readily concede my directions might be wrong, but it's the General principal I'm after.

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8 hours ago, XV107 said:

I suspect that any discussion of this would inevitably stray swiftly into politics, but IATA provided this briefing note immediately after the referendum which outlines the issues/challenges/opportunities, and offered purely for info/interest.

 

As I mentioned, I really wouldn't want it to stray, while I accept that it so easily could.

 

Thanks for this, but it doesn't deal with what I am hoping to answer, which is does leaving the open sky agreement affect entry into airspace, both over other member States or over the UK.

 

I have looked at the open skies agreement, and I have to say it is not the easiest document to follow.

 

I was rather hoping that more learned BM's would know the answer.

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If I understand the various OSA right, they regulate rights to operate between airports and not the right to fly over a country.  These rights are regulated by ICAO and not through bilateral agreements like the OSAs.

Now we should keep in mind that there are more than one Open Skies Agreement around the world, my guess is that the concern is about the EU-US OSA. In this case the agreement is between the EU and the US, as soon as the UK leave the EU the agreement is not valid anymore for the UK. This would in theory mean that the previous regulations apply, that for example limited the number of companies that could operate on certain flights.

To be honest I don't think this is a big issue as the simple solution is to negotiate a new deal with the US and it's unlikely that this is going to be much different from what already in place with the EU.

Alternatively the UK could decide to join the European Common Aviation Area, something that other non EU countries have done (Norway for example). The EU consider all members of the ECAA as covered by the EU-US OSA, in this way the UK would automatically retain the same rights.

 

Different story with what could happen within Europe: while no British airline would lose the right to fly to a EU airport from a UK airport and back, what airlines fear is that by leaving the EU they may lose the right to operate between airports within other EU countries. For example today EasyJet, as a EU based carrier, can operate between Milan and Rome, something that a non-EU based carrier can't do. Tomorrow this may not be possible.. or may be, depending on the outcome of the negotiations. For a company like EasyJet this is a serious problem as flights between EU countries make for a large part of their profit. Of course any big airline had already considered the danger before and EasyJet itself for example have established a new company in Austria to keep operating over the EU regardless of the outcome of the negotiations.

 

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