Air Transport Agreements (ATAs) are treaties signed between two countries allowing international commercial air transport services between their territories. These cover matters as diverse as overflight rights, airline designation, safety, and security, use of airports, customs, tariffs, sales and transfer of funds, ground handling and most importantly, traffic rights. The latter are the core economic rights of such treaties, which can specify the number of airlines that can serve the market, the capacity they can offer between them and at intermediate points, and the cities of the two countries between which they can operate. Traffic rights are typically the most contentious issues of an ATA, making them each a kind of trade agreement applying specifically to air transport services trade.
The rights granted by ATAs belong to the negotiating countries, each country then designating specific airlines to operate them.
The basis for modern ATAs date back to the Chicago Convention of 1944, a multilateral treaty that determined that the commercial aspects of air transport agreements were to be dealt with bilaterally rather than multilaterally. This Convention also created the International Civil Aviation Organization – ICAO, a United Nations Agency with its headquarters located in Montreal. As a key element of the Chicago Convention, it was agreed that no scheduled international air service may be operated over or into the territory of a contracting state without their express permission.
Over the following years, ICAO developed a series of traffic rights, known as freedoms of the air. Totalling nine, these freedoms continue to form the basis of rights exchanged bilaterally in air services negotiations today. They are, essentially, in respect of scheduled international air services. ICAO characterizes all “freedoms” beyond the Fifth as “so-called” because only the first five “freedoms” have been officially recognized as such by international treaty. These are:
- the right to fly across its territory without landing;
- the right to land in its territory for non-traffic purposes;
- the right to put down, in the territory of the first State, traffic coming from the home State of the carrier;
- the right to take on, in the territory of the first State, traffic destined for the home State of the carrier;
- the right to put down and to take on, in the territory of the first State, traffic coming from or destined to a third State;
- the right of transporting, via the home State of the carrier, traffic moving between two other States (the so-called Sixth Freedom of the Air, unlike the first five freedoms, is not incorporated as such into any widely recognized air service agreements since it is a combination of the third and fourth freedom);
- the right of transporting traffic between the territory of the granting State and any third State with no requirement to include on such operation any point in the territory of the recipient State, i.e. the service need not connect to or be an extension of any service to/from the home State of the carrier;
- the right of transporting cabotage traffic between two points in the territory of the granting State on a serve which originates or terminates in the home country of the foreign carrier;
- the right of transporting cabotage traffic of the granting State on a service performed entirely within the territory of the granting State, or stand-alone cabotage.
Well over 4,000 bilateral air transport agreements are in place worldwide. Canada has concluded about 100 such agreements with as many countries and territories. This number will eventually shrink by much the day the agreement concluded in 2009 with the European Union is brought into force as a treaty and formally replaces those agreements concluded separately before with its Member States.
International ATAs have become increasingly critical as economic and commercial agreements as aircraft technology allowed longer range and the possibility of linking directly an increasing number of cities. Their relevancy also grew as a result of the increasing number of airlines, including state-owned, set up in order to participate in their country’s own markets.
Author
Daniel de Bellefeuille
