As everyone here knows, the flying rights granted to airlines are agreements made between the governments. There are several levels of flying rights, and UPS is probably operating under fifth freedom rights, allowing us to pick up volume destined for different countries. I am a pilot, not a lawyer, so don't take what I say below as gospel, but I think I'm in the ballpark.
I fly the UPS 767 VLC-BCN-CGN route routinely, and to imply it is cabotage is incorrect. UPS does not have seventh freedom rights to fly cargo/express inside of Spain, but we are merely picking up volume for destinations outside of Spain for distribution at our Cologne hub to points beyond. The loads are usually extremely light into and out of VLC, so we may actually do that short leg from Barcelona only for lower fuel and parking costs; I actually don't know.
Much of our intra-Europe flying is actually a "change of gauge," where our larger MD11 and 744, fly into our Cologne hub from Asia, the Middle East, and North America, gets sorted and delivered to points beyond on our "smaller" 767 aircraft. Then, or course, the reverse occurs feeding European volume to points worldwide. It's an extremely complex system that is augmented by a large and sophisticated ground transportation network (a package will always go by ground if it can make its delivery time/date). There are many city pairs within Europe UPS does not have the right to fly, so we have a ten year contract with Star Air (Maersk Air) to cover that flying. I believe they use 11 B767SF in our Cologne operation. Our two unions and pilot groups have a very good relationship, and the IPA directly supported SAC during their most recent contract negotiations with UPS.
