Aviation Intelligence Reporter<\/em><\/a> in September.\r\n\r\nMost industry stakeholders fearing a hard Brexit are quickly refreshing their understanding of the WTO rules, but the aviation industry has different headaches. \u00a0Aviation is largely not covered by the WTO arrangements.\u00a0 The only exceptions are CRS, aircraft maintenance and ground handling.\r\n\r\nBut, Hammond may be right for all the wrong reasons.\u00a0 The bilateral air service agreements (ASA) that existed between the UK and EU27 states before the creation of the single European aviation market did not disappear with the common aviation market.\u00a0 They were merely superseded.\u00a0 This means that at Brexit, they are still there, like buried archaeological artefacts or long-lost car keys behind the sofa.\u00a0 Airlines will be able to rely upon those agreements.\u00a0 Surprise!\r\n\r\nIn other words, UK and EU27 carriers will be able to access some third and fourth freedom rights but only between their own country and the UK, and only to the extent they existed before being superseded.\u00a0 There might even be some fifth freedom rights tucked away.\u00a0 It depends on what was in the agreements.\u00a0 EU27 carriers will lose cabotage in the UK and unlimited access to the UK market.\u00a0 UK carriers will lose cabotage in all EU27 States and unlimited access to the European common aviation market.\u00a0 From this perspective, a hard Brexit favours EU27 carriers.\r\n\r\nHowever, ASAs before the Open Skies era are, to be polite, old school.\u00a0 For the purists, they are Bermuda II-esque. \u00a0In some cases they specified by name which airline could operate on which routes and with what frequency.\u00a0 Furthermore, they had strict ownership and control rules.\u00a0 So whatever rights there are will only be available to airlines of that country.\u00a0 Now it gets interesting.\r\n\r\nIn Europe, companies of one country can incorporate and set up principle places of business in other European countries.\u00a0 European ownership is the test, not national ownership.\r\n\r\nWith the exception of BA, which is now arguably a Spanish airline, but not named as such in any old style UK-Spain ASA, most UK airlines will be able to meet the ownership and control test.\u00a0 But how Dutch is KLM?\u00a0 How Swiss is Swiss?\u00a0 Not many ASAs that name airlines used words like Ryanair, or Wizz.\r\n\r\nFinally, the ball might be in the UK court.\u00a0 It could capitalise on the strict nature of pre-common market ASAs to knock out many EU27 air carriers \u2013 a potential bargaining chip in Brexit negotiations.\u00a0 All that will take is understanding and careful negotiation.\u00a0 Time to wheel in the crack UK negotiating team.\u00a0 Oh, wait\u2026","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As of mid-October, Brexit talks are at a standstill.\u00a0 Henrik Hololei, Director General of DG MOVE, recently indicated that there is no clarity on where the aviation industry will be post-Brexit.\u00a0 All the while UK Prime Minister Theresa May is being told to prepare for a no deal scenario by ideologues with their own agenda. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,15,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-air-services-agreements","category-airlines","category-international-civil-aviation-organization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746","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=746"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":748,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746\/revisions\/748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aviationadvocacy.aero\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}