{"id":717,"date":"2017-06-21T12:46:28","date_gmt":"2017-06-21T10:46:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=717"},"modified":"2017-06-22T10:10:51","modified_gmt":"2017-06-22T08:10:51","slug":"qatari-overflight-rights-qatars-international-law-fights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/?p=717","title":{"rendered":"Qatari overflight rights: Qatar\u2019s international law fights"},"content":{"rendered":"The Middle East is starting to look a lot like Spain circa 1936.\u00a0 Then as now, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.\u00a0 That always makes for strange bedfellows.\u00a0 Like the Soviet purges of the Fifth Column, Arab States including Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have collectively isolated Qatar over its supposed support of violent Islamic movements.\u00a0 Libya, Maldives and Yemen soon followed suit.\r\n\r\nLike an icepick made Soviet-red by the blood from Trotsky\u2019s head, the liveries of Middle East carriers should now be painted crimson.\u00a0 Qatar\u2019s support for all things anti-Israel may have landed it in hot water and that water smells like jet fuel.\u00a0 Too many weird associations and mixed metaphors?\u00a0 Welcome to Middle East politics in a Trump era. Imagine what it must look like from inside Trump\u2019s head.\r\n\r\nThe synchronised isolation includes the closing of airspace and airports to Qatari flights.\u00a0 The legality of these moves, from the perspective of public international air law, is suspect.\r\n\r\nThe Chicago Convention recognised states\u2019 complete and exclusive sovereignty over their airspace, which means that Gulf states and Egypt may exclude other states\u2019 operators from overflying their territories.\u00a0 However, the principle of complete and exclusive sovereignty over the skies was reined in by the International Air Services Transit Agreement, signed on the same day as the Chicago Convention.\r\n\r\nUnder IASTA, each state grants to the others the privilege to overfly its territory \u2013 the so-called \u2018First Freedom.\u2019\u00a0 According to its own terms, parties to IASTA may denounce the agreement and withdraw from it only on one year\u2019s notice.\r\n\r\nBahrain, Egypt and UAE are parties to IASTA: Saudi Arabia is not.\u00a0 Neither Bahrain, Egypt nor UAE has withdrawn from the agreement, making their denial of overflight a violation of IASTA.\u00a0 Arguably, only Saudi Arabia may withhold access to its skies.\r\n\r\nOf course, overflight can be suspended for safety and security concerns pursuant to the Chicago Convention\u2019s recognition of complete and exclusive sovereignty.\u00a0 The US did so following the attacks of 9\/11, and European states and the US frequently do this via blacklists that designate certain countries and\/or their airlines as unsafe.\r\n\r\nInitially, Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and UAE made no such claims of necessity to preserve safety and\/or security within their territories.\u00a0 Their professed purpose of denying overflight rights was political.\u00a0 One week after the blockade was announced, Saudi Arabia asserted<\/a> a security motive.\r\n\r\nThe Chicago Convention mandates that its parties not use civil aviation for any purpose inconsistent with the aims of Convention.\u00a0 By leveraging civil aviation for regional, political concerns, these countries are treating civil aviation like a trade sanction \u2013 an illegal one at that.\u00a0 Qatar may have a right of reprisal for these breaches of international obligations: it can inflict commensurate counter-measures against these states.\u00a0 Likely, such counter-measures would have little effect.\r\n\r\nQatar could also seek resolution through ICAO \u2013 IASTA expressly includes the Chicago Convention dispute resolution mechanism as a means for resolving disputes arising under it.\u00a0 ICAO\u2019s dispute resolution mechanism has been invoked a handful of times, notable in 1995 in relation to the US \u2018No Fly\u2019 policy prohibiting Cuban overflight.\u00a0 When it became clear that the ICAO Council would rule in Cuba\u2019s favour, the US capitulated.\u00a0 That took three years.\r\n\r\nIn the wake of the overflight ban, Qatar Airways Chief Executive Akbar al-Baker called on<\/a> ICAO to take action. \u00a0He recently lashed out<\/a> against ICAO for moving too slowly.\u00a0 To its credit, the ICAO can take no action unless formally requested by Qatar, and dispute resolution under the ICAO Council can move forward only after formally invoked by Qatar after diplomatic processes have been exhausted.\r\n\r\nPurportedly, those diplomatic processes have begun.\u00a0 Qatar sent a letter<\/a> to the ICAO Council seeking assistance in resolving the matter.\u00a0 Whether formal dispute resolution has been invoked under the Convention is yet unclear.\r\n\r\nIn the meantime, Qatar Airways is stuck with longer flight routes causing increased fuel expenditures and emissions, of course, amongst other travails.\u00a0 Coincidentally, the airline recently announced<\/a> that its net profits rose more than 20% over the past year.\u00a0 Without for a moment questioning the religious sectarian basis for the tension, these decisions may also have a positive impact for a number of other airlines in the region.\r\n\r\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Middle East is starting to look a lot like Spain circa 1936.\u00a0 Then as now, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.\u00a0 That always makes for strange bedfellows.\u00a0 Like the Soviet purges of the Fifth Column, Arab States including Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have collectively isolated Qatar over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,15,11,18,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-services-agreements","category-airlines","category-airports","category-safety","category-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=717"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":721,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/717\/revisions\/721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}