Question about airspace regulations

togaselected

Looking at FR24 tonight and it got me wondering about how airspace is regulated. For example, if an airline is flying from Heathrow to New York and the route takes them over Ireland, do the operator have to be approved to fly over Irish airspace and all the other areas they fly over individually or are they approved to fly over all airspace in general?

arubex

Most commercial services are granted automatic overflight privileges ( first freedom ) because their state is a signatory to the International Air Services Transit Agreeement. They can also land for non-commercial purposes ( second freedom ).

Not all nations are signatories but many of the significant ones are with the notable exceptions of China ( other than Hong Kong and Macao ) and Russia:

www.icao.int/secretariat/legal/list%20of%20parties/transit_en.pdf

Canada threatened to withdraw in the 1980s during a dispute with the UK about access to Heathrow, which would have complicated Atlantic traffic immensely. The UK backed-down.

Edit: apparently Canada did withdraw! Since 1989 individual States have had to sign bilateral agreements with Canada for overflights. The elimination of such a web of agreements was the point of the IASTA!


There are usually overflight navigation charges to be paid, regardless. Note that it's also a 'privilege', not a 'right'

smurfjed

In the non-scheduled world an operator would have to apply to each and every country which they were going to fly over, Europe makes this easier by granting a blanket approval. The aircraft would then be charged a certain rate based on its size per nautical mile within that airspace.

The airspace may have specific requirements or restrictions such as RVSM, CPDLC, TCAS, or for the Atlantic the operator must comply with specific MNPS / NAT-HLA requirements such as having two HF radios, 2 independent long range navigation systems, specific crew training and state of registry approval to operate in that airspace.

The King of Dalriada

Every 6 months we get a few pages attached to the back of our briefing packages, listing all the over flight approval codes and contact details for every country we operate over.