From Business World of 22 April 2005.
On opening Indian skies
For centuries, international law has encompassed Freedom
of the Seas: that a ship has a right to pick up goods from any port and carry
it to a port in another country. The other maritime right called cabotage – the
right to carry traffic from one port to another within the same country – is
reserved for national flag carriers.
Freedom of the air, however, does not exist; every country
is supposed to own its skies, and can barter freedoms relating to it. The first
freedom is our right to overfly another country. The second freedom is our
right to land in another country without setting down or picking up passengers,
mail or freight. The third and fourth freedoms are our right to fly commercial
traffic to and from another country. The fifth freedom is our freedom to fly
traffic between another nation and a third nation. The sixth freedom is freedom
for the airline of a second nation to fly traffic from a third nation to our
nation. The seventh freedom is our right to carry traffic between two other
nations without touching our own. The eighth freedom is cabotage.
The US and India signed an air transport agreement on 14
April giving each other fifth freedom. Specifically, India’s airlines can fly
passengers, on both scheduled and charter flights, from a point behind India to
one or more in India to the US and then beyond; they can also fly freight
between the US and a third country without touching India at all. US airlines
have reciprocal rights.
This agreement breaks new ground between the US and India,
and is also very different from all India’s other air services agreements. The
impetus to this radical departure came long ago from the US. In 1944, an allied
victory in World War II seemed certain; the War would also leave behind a vast
fleet of long-distance aircraft, the only use for which would be to fly
passengers. So allied nations met in Chicago and agreed on ground rules which
ensured that flights between countries would emerge out of a bargain between
the two governments. The first such bilateral agreement was made by Britain and
the US. Negotiators of both countries were flown to Bermuda in 1956 and left
there till they came to an agreement. The terms set out in that agreement came
to be known as Bermuda rules and were universally followed.
The agreements made by the US under these rules led to
most international flights landing in New York, Boston or Washington on the
east coast and San Francisco or Los Angeles on the west coast. Four American
cities that felt left out formed an alliance called United States Airports for
a Better International Air Service in 1988; under their pressure, the US
allowed foreign airlines in 1990 to land without previous agreement at US
airports that were not served by an US international airline.
Northwest Airlines was in alliance with KLM and was in
trouble. To help it out, the US signed the first Open Skies Agreement with the
Netherlands in 1993. It followed it up with one with Canada in 1995. Since
then, the US has tried to get as close as it can to open skies in its
agreements with different countries; India only agreed in 2005.
A day before the agreement with the US, India signed a
memorandum of agreement with the United Kingdom which also embodies fifth
freedom. Indian and British airlines will be able to operate 56 flights a week
to and from Heathrow in two years’ time. Indian airlines will be able to fly
any number of flights to other British airports; British airlines will be
allowed to operate 7 flights a week to any Indian airport (except that to
Madras and Bangalore the limit will be 14 a week). Thus India has got much more
than the UK in this memorandum.
It is not an agreement, because agreements that the UK
signs have to be compatible with the law of the European Union, which requires
that whatever rights are given to British airlines must be extended to other EU
airlines. The British also asked for other things – for instance, that tourists
should be allowed to stay for 45 days, not 28 as at present, and that they
should be allowed to come with one charter operator and leave with another. The
Indian side promised to think about it. It seems to me that the world is moving
towards open skies, and that India is pondering it. Still, it is nice to be
able to fly abroad with Jet or Sahara; I wish there were more private airlines.
