OPEN SKIES AGREEMENT
Open Skies Policy and Significance of the Open Skies Agreement:
In civil aviation, an open skies policy means liberalization and ease of access and rules of use of national airports for foreign airlines. It is joined in order to increase the tourist flow and to develop the potential as a regional air hub. It’s goal is to increase international travel, competitive prices and to establish efficient procedure.
Open Skies is one of the most wide-ranging international efforts promoting openness and transparency of military forces and activities. There is also a treaty on Open Skies signed on March 24, 1992 at Helsinki which came into effect on January 1, 2002.
Open Skies Agreement are bilateral agreements that the two countries negotiate to provide rights for airlines to offer international passenger and cargo services. Some states apply this policy only to certain airports, not the whole country.
India’s Open Sky Policy:
As per the National Civil Aviation Policy(NCAP) 2016 the government is allowed to enter into the open sky air services agreement on reciprocal basis with South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation(SAARC) nations as well as countries beyond 5,000 kilometre radius from New Delhi.
According to this policy, countries within the radius of 5,000 kilometre need to enter into the bilateral agreement and both the nations mutually decide the traffic, number of flights between the countries.
It allows unlimited number of flights to six metro airports namely Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Bengluru and Chennai, was signed with six countries namely Jamaica, Guyana, Czech Republic, Finland, Spain and Sri Lanka.
India has Air Service Agreement (ASA) with 109 countries covering aspects relating to the number of flights, seats, landing points and code-share. But it restricts the unlimited number of flights between the countries.
Freedoms of the Air:
The freedoms of the air are a set of commercial aviation rights granting a country’s airlines the privilege to enter and land in another country’s airspace. They were formulated as a result of disagreement over the extend of aviation liberalization in the Convention on International Civil Aviation of 1944, also known as Chicago Convention.
There are total nine freedoms of air are given:
1st: The right to fly over a foreign country without landing.
2nd: The right to refuel or carry out maintenance in a foreign country without embarking or disembarking passengers or cargo.
3rd: The right to fly from one’s own country to another country.
4th: The right to fly from another country to one’s own.
5th: The right to fly between two foreign countries on a flight originating or ending in one’s own country.
6th: The right to fly from a foreign country to another/ two places in a foreign country while stopping in one’s own country for non-technical reasons.
7th: The right to fly between the two foreign countries, where the flight do not touch one’s own country.
8th: The right to fly inside a foreign country, continuing to one’s own country.
9th: The right to fly within a foreign country, without continuing to one’s own country.
REFERENCES:
· Wikipedia
· The Hindu
· CABAR
· Press Information Bureau
– Mayuri Baraskar
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