Hunter
Contention by ONE government official whether he be the head of the DOT or not, does not a policy make. There are five freedoms of the air formally established. All the others have been established by negotiating practice or precedent between bilateral partners. Each bilateral agreement between two countries always contains provisions allowing, at a minimum, the first four freedoms of the air. The fifth freedom was not universally made available between countries. Recently, Other traffic freedoms and concepts have been developed, some of which have been included in U.S. bilateral air service agreements with other nations. But by no means are the U.S. definitions of the other freedoms (six through eight) accepted by all other nations on the globe, or are they codified in biltilateral agreements like the Chicago Convention.
The U.S. generally defines sixth freedom as flowing traffic from a third country over an
airline's homeland to a destination in the United States. An example would be a Japanese
airline flowing traffic originating in Thailand over Japan to the United States. Most bilateral agreements do not explicitly set down sixth freedom rights, they are simply a silent partner of fifth freedom rights that are taken advantage of by most airlines around the world once fifth freedom rights are established. (This is actually a combination of Third and fourth freedoms that has been so universally used by the airlines and signatory countries of the Chicago as to be accepted into common practice. Yes, I suppose the U.S. (D.O.T.?) took the lead and formally defined it, but only after it was in such wide spread use as to be un-asailable.
The United States has defined seventh freedom as the ability of an airline to provide service between two countries not of its homeland without the service being connected in any way with a service to the homeland country. An example of this type of service would be a U.S. airline providing turn-around service between Frankfurt and Paris. (This was done originally, I understand, in the early 1970's primarily to help Iceland).
Some journo's in aviation are beginning to call Cabotage the eighth freedom. The pure definition of cabotage from the Chicago Convention is the right of an airline of one country to fly and carry traffic between two points within the territory of another country. There is a strict prohibition in the Chicago Convention against any signatory state "exclusively" exchanging cabotage rights with another signatory state, so once this happens, there will be no going back....even when the Southwest's of the U.S. decimate the British Airline industry.
Currently, a number of U.S. laws and regulations prohibit foreign airlines, aircraft and/or crews from operating between two points in the U.S. and carrying traffic. For a cabotage exchange, EACH ONE of these U.S. laws would have to be separately repealed or otherwise rendered ineffective. The problem is that some of the laws involve other modes of transportation (like the maritime industry). In addition, the Chicago Convention would have to be dealt with if the U.S. (or any other signatory country) tried to conclude a cabotage exchange with one partner, or even the EU.
Under the Treaty of Rome which created the European Common Market and European Union, the 15 European signatory states made a commitment that their individual national borders would be broken down for trade and transportation purposes among those states. As a result, airlines licensed by the EU member states now hold EU licenses and may fly between any cities within the borders of the European Union. There are some who argue that the Treaty of Rome is a violation of the Chicago Convention, but no one has taken the EU to court over the issue. The 15 national governments of the E.U. STILL RETAIN ALL AUTHORITY todecide how their airlines will fly/operate to and from non-EU member states or third countries and also which airlines can operate in and out of their states and under which freedoms.
The European Commission continues to challenge the rights of member states on this authority, but it has not been successful. The EC has alleged in a court filing that European member states which signed open skies agreements with the United States violated the Treaty of Rome by authorizing U.S. airlines to fly between two EU member states and carry traffic (fifth freedom rights). This suit has not been ruled on, and European member states believe the EC will lose the suit. Purely for public relations purposes, does the EC maintain that U.S. airline fifth freedom rights within the EU are the same as cabotage rights. This EC argument, most U.S. experts say, has no validity.
[This message has been edited by Beaver Driver (edited 13 March 2001).]