For or Against Bilateral Agreements between ICAO member states? What are your views??

[CheekyFly]

Hello to all in the airline world!

I am conducting some research into Bilateral Agreements between member states of ICAO. What are your thoughts? Do you agree with Bilateral Agreements? Or should we see more of an "open skies" program around the world?

[sam dilly]

sHOULD WE BE ALLOWING AIR SEYCHELLES TO COME INTO THIS COUNTRY, AND TO BE FLYING OUR TROOPS TO AND FROM THE FALKLAND ISLANDS.
AND AS A RESULT LEAVING BRITISH BASED AIRLINES AND CREW OUT OF A JOB, WHILST FOREIGNERS ARE PAID BY BRITISH TAXPAYERS :\

[The SSK]

‘Open Skies’ and ‘Bilateral’ are not mutually exclusive. Open skies refers to the US policy of signing liberal bilaterals with as many countries as it can. The EU/US Open Skies agreement is in effect a bilateral. The only important true multilateral agreement that I can think of is the one which creates the European single aviation market.

Generally, liberal bilaterals (or multilaterals) mean two things – the other guy can invade your markets, and you can invade his. Consequently, they tend to favour the strong and the efficient. Because they favour competition they supposedly benefit the consumer, although the European experience of the 1990s was of ‘frequency wars’ using smaller-than-ideal aircraft with negative impacts on the environment. There’s also a tendency towards overcapacity and airline failures.

Liberal bilaterals have also favoured the rise of sixth-freedom carriers such as Singapore Airlines and especially the Gulf carriers, Emirates, Etihad and Qatar. An open skies type bilateral between UAE and UK has allowed Emirates in particular to swamp the UK market with far more capacity than UK-UAE would ever need, and soak up a large proportion of UK-Far East traffic. On the other hand the UK having open skies facilities to and through UAE is relatively worthless.

[pwalhx]

"sHOULD WE BE ALLOWING AIR SEYCHELLES TO COME INTO THIS COUNTRY, AND TO BE FLYING OUR TROOPS TO AND FROM THE FALKLAND ISLANDS.
AND AS A RESULT LEAVING BRITISH BASED AIRLINES AND CREW OUT OF A JOB, WHILST FOREIGNERS ARE PAID BY BRITISH TAXPAYERS"

There is a squeeze on gpvernment spednding in particular the MOD is under a lot of pressure, one would assume troop flying is on open tender, the UK Carriers have the opportunity to quote, obviously they lost. Having said that the whole procurement oricess obviously needs review as evidenced by the cost of lightbulbs and screws. However it is not the fault of Air Seychelles that they were the cheapest and as far as I know there is plenty of troops flown by British Airlines.


As for the other comment on EK swamping the market with uneeded capacity, that is subjective, they fill their aircraft so that would indicate the capacity is needed. Or did you mean that theya re taking passengers away from other airlines?

[CheekyFly]

There’s also a tendency towards overcapacity and airline failures.


Well exactly what I agree with, in regards to opening up the skies, you're putting too many airline on a particular route and then airline markets will keep being shifted to other destinations. Also, you'll see more airlines going under as their trunk routes will be invaded, causing the Global carriers to get bigger and swallow the little guys up.

For example the MEL - SYD route in Australia. Yes its the 3rd busiest route in the world, however what would happen to it, if Carriers like SQ, EK, CX, QR etc were given permission to operate that sector whilst their aircraft sits at the airport for 24 hours, we're talking aircraft like the 773ER And A346 which can easily carry 350+ pax and do at least 2 return sectors MEL-SYD all within cabin crew hours. United Airlines used to offer this service between International Terminals and flights were sold at 99.00 a sector, not bad for flying a Jumbo 747 on a full service carrier.

On the other hand I belieould give the some of Australians airlines the kick up the bum that they need. QF would have to look at ramping up its service standards and would have to compete with the Arabic Airline service offered. Their inflight product and cabin presentation will need to be second-to-none.