So how does Fedex fly from UK to France?

[ATPMBA]

Fedex is a US Air Carrier and my question is how do they legally fly packages from the UK to France? I thought that would be considered cabatoge.

[Beaver_Driver]

The EU is not one sovereign country. Each country of the EU still has their own regulations and abilities to make individual treaties as well as their own leadership and governing bodies. Not cabotage under the current definition.

cabotage. 1. Trade between two points in a country, usually prohibited to carriers of another nation. 2. The right to engage in such trade.

[flyingtincan]

Looks like Ryanair have, presumably, agreed cabotage all over Europe - or does it not apply to live freight?

[dusk2dawn]

Ryanair is a EU-carrier = no restrictions within EU, self loading or not

[Pagan_angel]

Beaverdriver is correct

Freedoms of the air - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedoms_of_the_air#Seventh_freedom)

European countries are still separate sovereign states - FedEx presumeable has Seventh Freedom rights to fly between two countries. Also I would expect that the flight arrives in France and then travels on to the USA?

[dixi188]

FEDEX and UPS fly internal european freight in N reg. planes with American crews because the law allows it.

It used to be that "N" planes brought the boxes into Europe and European contractors did the internal stuff. Then things changed.

Its time some investigative journalist got on to this and brought it to the publics attention. Then perhaps the politicans would do something to protect EU jobs.

Air contractors, Channel Express, Heavylift, and many others have all lost out because Americans (and Turks) are taking our jobs.

Its time the EU started to do American type protectionism and stop these foreigners flying internal freight.

[Beaver_Driver]

Yup - Fire the Queen, elect an EU president who will govern over ALL the EU, Get rid of the pound, embrace the Euro (everyone); do away with all border crossings regulations and border guards, allow free crossborder transport of ALL goods, get rid of the British Parliment, all the different laws and treaties, and declare yourselves one United EU instead of just a marketing arrangement; and then you just might have a case for an "investigative journo."

[antonovman]

Didnt all this come about with Open Skies ?
The americans were given entry in to LHR and authority to carry pax and cargo from any EU airport to any other EU airport.
In return we got ....? erm what did we get ?
Although i think the cargo side were given the rights before the pax traffic

[dusk2dawn]

antonovman, you are right about "open skies" but wrong about "cargo before pax".

Truth is that many european countries entered into open skies like agreements with the US after WW2. Heathrow was by far the first. But of all the US airlines that could have established an intra-europe network only the parcel carriers did.

[mtogw]

Its one of the reasons Fedex purchased Flying Tigers,,
For the Fifth freedom rights, especially in the Far East and Germany, but even then we didn't have the UK to France rights and still loaded a feeder aircraft (Channel Express Herald and others) from STN to BRU or CDG.
Open Skies changed all that I believe, but after my time at Stansted.

[742]

Yup - Fire the Queen, elect an EU president who will govern over ALL the EU, Get rid of the pound, embrace the Euro (everyone); do away with all border crossings regulations and border guards, allow free crossborder transport of ALL goods, get rid of the British Parliment, all the different laws and treaties, and declare yourselves one United EU instead of just a marketing arrangement; and then you just might have a case for an "investigative journo."


And for the EU as a whole, give up all but one of those seats at the UN. Get rid of all but one set of ambassadors. Close all but one set of embassies. And so on.

[antonovman]

"Truth is that many european countries entered into open skies like agreements with the US after WW2. Heathrow was by far the first. But of all the US airlines that could have established an intra-europe network only the parcel carriers did."

PanAm had a good european network, I used to work for them in FRA and we had a lot of intereuropean flights

"And for the EU as a whole, give up all but one of those seats at the UN. Get rid of all but one set of ambassadors. Close all but one set of embassies. And so on"
Typical american comment

[Beaver_Driver]

You just don't understand the differences between the US and the EU. The EU is not a country. In the US, the states have no rights to close their borders, to regulate trade between borders or states, nor to negotiate treaties with foreign governments. The EU is vastly different. Each country of the EU is (currently) sovereign in their own right and can close their borders at will. They can decide, and some have decided, not to use the Euro. They can regulate commerce and the movement of goods coming over their borders. The EU has a long way to go before it can be considered a country.

The open skies you are talking about was not a treaty with the EU (at least not back in the Pan Am days as there was no EU). It was most likely a treaty with a single nation or several nations and it was not negotiated by PanAm. Rather it was negotiated between the respective governments and the slots allocated to PanAm. Open skies was but a dream in the PanAm days. To really discuss this you need to look at the history of international aviation.

Nations often feel that they can only rely on their locally owned carriers to have a commitment to providing service to their own country. This is unimportant if you're a small country in Europe with excellent road and rail service to other countries, but if you're a remote island in the Pacific, air service is essential.

So, for many reasons international air travel has long been subjected to all manner of complicated restrictions and bilateral treaties between nations. One of the main treaties that sets out the fundamental building blocks of air transportation regulation - the 'rules of the road' - is the Chicago Convention in 1944. This along with Bermuda one and two and at least one other global convention on air commerce set the stage for the freedoms of the air which are the building blocks that all airlines and governments now use to regulate international air commerce. Essentially, open skies has nothing to do with what is being flown now. Open skies refers to a series of discussions and talks that have the potential to negate or further enhance (or maybe even do away with) the current hodge podge of treaties and regulations that make up the freedoms of the air.

[742]

"And for the EU as a whole, give up all but one of those seats at the UN. Get rid of all but one set of ambassadors. Close all but one set of embassies. And so on"
Typical american comment

While I can see how my comment can be taken as an insult, it is not intended to be so. Flying between London and Paris is not the same as flying between New York and Chicago, yet it seems on this forum that Europeans keep trying to equate the two. In practice it appears to this American that some Europeans try to have it both ways, playing the sovereign nations card when it is to their benefit and then pretending that the EU is itself a nation when that approach is beneficial.

So I stand by my comment. If the citizens in Europe want London to Paris to be a domestic flight then they need to be one nation, and the most obvious demonstration of that is for all those UN seats to be replaced by one EU ambassador and all those embassies consolidated into one set. Or I suppose you could let the United States have 50, though the thought of Alabama having a role in international affairs is a bit disconcerting.