Freedoms of the air
The freedoms of the air, also called five freedoms of air transport, 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 disagreements over the extent of aviation liberalisation in the Convention on International Civil Aviation of 1944, known as the Chicago Convention. The United States had called for a standardized set of separate air rights to be negotiated between states, but most other countries were concerned that the size of the U.S. airlines would dominate air travel if there were not strict rules. The freedoms of the air are the fundamental building blocks of the international commercial aviation route network. The use of the terms "freedom" and "right" confers entitlement to operate international air services only within the scope of the multilateral and bilateral treaties that allow them.
The first two freedoms concern the passage of commercial aircraft through foreign airspace and airports, while the other freedoms are about carrying people, mail and cargo internationally. The first through fifth freedoms are officially enumerated by international treaties, especially the Chicago Convention. Several other freedoms have been added, and although most are not officially recognised under broadly applicable international treaties, they have been agreed to by a number of countries. The lower-numbered freedoms are relatively universal while the higher-numbered ones are rarer and more controversial. Liberal open skies agreements often represent the least restrictive form of air services agreements and may include many if not all freedoms. They are relatively rare, but examples include the recent single aviation markets established in the European Union, and between Australia and New Zealand.
Overview
Freedoms of the air apply to commercial aviation. The terms 'freedom' and 'right' are a shorthand way of referring to the type of international services permitted between two or more countries. Even when such services are allowed by countries, airlines may still face restrictions to accessing them by the terms of treaties or for other reasons.| Freedom | Description | Example |
| 1st | The right to fly over a foreign country without landing. | A flight from Canada to Mexico, flown by a Mexican airline, flying over the United States. |
| 2nd | The right to refuel or carry out maintenance in a foreign country without embarking or disembarking passengers or cargo. | A flight from the United Kingdom to the United States, flown by a British airline, refueling at an Irish airport such as Shannon. |
| 3rd | The right to fly from one's own country to another country. | A flight from New Zealand to Japan, flown by a New Zealand airline. |
| 4th | The right to fly from another country to one's own. | A flight from Chile to Brazil, flown by a Brazilian airline. |
| 5th | The right to fly between two foreign countries on a journey originating or ending in one's own country. Each leg can be flown by a different aircraft so long as the same flight number is used. | A flight from Melbourne, Australia to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, with a stop in Denpasar, Indonesia, flown by a Malaysian airline. Passengers and cargo may travel between Melbourne and Denpasar, with no intention to continue on to Kuala Lumpur. |
| 6th | The right to fly from a foreign country to another while stopping in one's own country for non-technical reasons. | A flight from New Zealand to Colombia, flown by an airline based in Chile, with a stop in Santiago, Chile. This can also be a flight by a Colombian airline flying under the 5th freedom, allowing codeshare by the Chilean airline which uses the 6th freedom. |
| modified 6th | The right to fly between two places in a foreign country while stopping in one's own country for non-technical reasons. | A flight between two airports in the United States, flown by a Canadian airline, with a stop in Canada. Such as a flight from Seattle to Boston via Toronto, with a passenger ticketed from Seattle to Boston. |
| 7th | The right to fly between two foreign countries, where the flights do not touch one's own country. | A flight between Spain and Sweden, flown by an Irish airline. |
| 8th | The right to fly inside a foreign country, having started from or continuing to one's own country. | A flight operated by a South African airline between San Francisco and Cape Town, with a full stop in New York. Passengers and cargo may board or disembark the flight in New York, with no intention to board the flight to Cape Town. |
| 9th | The right to fly within a foreign country without continuing to one's own country. | A flight flown between Paris and Lyon by a German airline. |
Transit rights
The first and second freedoms grant rights to pass through a country without carrying traffic that originates or terminates there and are known as 'transit rights'. The Chicago Convention drew up a multilateral agreement in which the first two freedoms, known as the International Air Services Transit Agreement or "Two Freedoms Agreement", were open to all signatories. At the end of 2017, the treaty was accepted by 133 countries.A country granting transit rights may impose fees for the privilege. The reasonableness of such fees has caused controversy at times.
First freedom
The first freedom is the right to fly over a foreign country without landing. It grants the privilege to fly over the territory of a treaty country without landing. Member states of the International Air Services Transit Agreement grant this freedom to other member states, subject to the transiting aircraft using designated air routes. As of the summer of 2007, 129 countries were parties to this treaty, including such large ones as the United States, India, and Australia. However, Brazil, Russia, Indonesia, and China never joined, with Canada leaving the treaty in 1988. These large and strategically located non-IASTA-member states prefer to maintain tighter control over foreign airlines' overflight of their airspace and negotiate transit agreements with other countries on a case-by-case basis. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and China did not allow airlines to enter their airspace. There were flights from Europe to Japan that refueled in Alaska. Since the end of the Cold War, first freedom rights are almost completely universal. Most countries require prior notification before an overflight and charge fees, which can sometimes be substantial.IASTA allows each member country to charge foreign airlines "reasonable" fees for using its airports and "facilities"; according to IATA, such fees should not be higher than those charged to domestic airlines engaged in similar international services. Such fees indeed are commonly charged merely for the privilege of the overflight of a country's national territory, when no airport usage is involved.. For example, the Federal Aviation Administration of the U.S., an IASTA signatory, charges overflight fees based on the great circle distance between an aircraft's points of entry into and exit from U.S.-controlled airspace. This transit is then divided into overland and oceanic components; the latter include flights over international waters where air traffic is controlled by the U.S., including sections of Atlantic and Arctic Oceans and much of the northern Pacific Ocean. Since 2019 these have been charged at for en route components, and for the oceanic components.
Countries that are not signatories of the IASTA charge overflight fees as well; among them, Russia is known for charging high fees, especially on the transarctic routes that cross Siberia. In 2008, Russia temporarily denied Lufthansa Cargo permission to overfly its airspace with cargo ostensibly due to "delayed payments for its flyover rights". In 2008, European airlines were paying Russia €300 million a year for flyover permissions.
Due to the Russo-Ukrainian War, in 2022 the US, EU and other countries cancelled the third and fourth freedoms for Russian airlines, preventing them flying to these countries. In response Russia blocked all freedoms for western airlines, including the first freedom. Flights from the EU to Japan now fly over central Asia and China instead. Chinese and other airlines continue to fly over Russia.
Second freedom
The second freedom allows technical stops without the embarking or disembarking of passengers or cargo. It is the right to stop in one country solely for refueling or other maintenance on the way to another country. Because of longer range of modern airliners, second freedom rights are comparatively rarely exercised by passenger carriers today, and then often as fifth freedom, allowing new passengers to embark at the stop. But second freedom rights are widely used by air cargo carriers, and are more or less universal between countries.The most famous example of the second freedom is Shannon Airport, which was used as a stopping point for most transatlantic flights until the 1960s, since Shannon Airport was the closest European airport to the United States. Anchorage was similarly used for flights between Western Europe and East Asia, bypassing Soviet airspace, closed until the end of the Cold War. Anchorage was still used by some Chinese airlines for flights to the U.S. and Toronto until the 2000s. Flights between Europe and South Africa often stopped at Ilha do Sal in Cabo Verde, off the coast of Senegal, due to many African nations refusing to allow South African flights to overfly their territory during the Apartheid regime. Gander, Newfoundland was also a frequent stopping point for airlines from the USSR and the Eastern Bloc on the way to the Caribbean, Central America, Mexico, and South America.