Something I’ve always wondered… how does the granting of airline routes work?
Let’s say US airline A has acquired the route from LA to Tokyo. I assume that means that they are guaranteed a certain number of takeoffs and landings a week/month/year and that other airlines can’t use those slots. US Airline B is interested in the LA to Tokyo route too, and they ask the FAA for slots but the FAA says that Airline A has those routes. Tough nuggies. :o
So airline B has to then purchase the rights to those routes from airline A? Not going to happen since airline A is happy having a near monopoly.
But both LAX and Narita have increased their capacity so more planes can land and take off from there now. How does the FAA decide who gets the extra slots? Does airline A just get to increase its number of takeoffs and landings, assuming it wants to, or can airline B now get in on the action?
And is JAL somehow restricted in the number of flights they can have between LAX and Narita? They aren’t a US airline so do they have to acquire a route from Tokyo to LA? :dubious:
The FAA doesn’t have anything to do with it (especially international flights). Airports sell terminal spots for which airlines pay a fee for take-offs and landings at their airport. If Narita has extra spots, then it markets them to airlines, that would consider flights to Narita.
Airline #1 may have take-off and landing rights at DFW and at Heathrow. If they choose they can schedule flights between those locations up to the number permitted under the agreements with the respective airports. Those are essentially the “rights” they are referring to…“contractual rights” they have paid for…not granted by some government agency.
Here is the official agreement between Australia and the United States (PDF Warning). The two governments agree first and then the airlines authorized by the respective countries are allowed to fly between them. I remember when Pan Am was dissolved, United Airlines was first in line to take over Pan Am’s routes to/from Australia, ahead of American and Northwest.
No and no. Governments negotiate with each other to establish air service between their countries, and possibly any other countries they may pass over. The details of whatever treaties they come up with, including what routes are to be taken, how many flights there are, and emergency stuff, are dealt with by some arm of the domestic governments of the airlines. (I’m not if this is under the FAA in the US. It might be the Department of Transportation more generally). Letting market forces alone decide all these things is only possible if there is an “anything goes” kind of agreement between the countries in question. Without such agreements in place, no rights exist, even if you have the planes and the gate space. There is, for example, no such agreement between the United States and China, and the two countries negotiate constantly to deal with the increasing need for more flights. The negotiation issue isn’t likely to go away anytime soon, since in a true “anything goes” situation, cabotage (which would be like Air France flying between San Francisco and Los Angeles), would be legal, and it very rarely is because countries want to protect their domestic airlines.
The Department of Transportation can have a lot to do with it, if there isn’t an “open skies” agreement in place between two countries. Flights are still permitted between countries but could be limited by an aviation agreement. The result is that airlines have to apply for route authority to fly. The last rush for routes was when the DoT opened up additional routes to China. Most of the airlines put in bids.
Buying access to routes may also have something to do with access to a particular airport. If US Airline A is stuck at London Gatwick and wants access to Heathrow, it may have to partner with a foreign airline in order to get access to those airports.
I can’t speak to the OP about Japan Airlines specifically. But if Japan’s agreement with the US limits flights in some way, the countries can agree to increase the number of flights and then allow airlines to apply. JAL and ANA could apply for routes from Tokyo to some US City while US Airlines would apply to the DoT.
I don’t actually know how the powers that be decide these things. I do know, though, that if Airline A has a bunch of routes that Airline B has, then if Airline B buys Airline A, they get to keep Airline A’s routes.
When the agreements are updated to reflect increased demand and so on, I don’t know how the routes get allocated. I assume some sort of auction, subject perhaps to anti-trust laws and whatnot. I read once that airlines apply for these routes, but what an application would consist of, I don’t really know.
Here in Minneapolis, it’s the Metro Airport Commission. They use a lottery system to choose between any airlines that apply. But in the lottery, each applying airline gets chances based on the number of gates it currently has. Thus Northwest (now Delta), which controls 80% of the gates, gets 4 times as many chances as all the other airlines put together. So while appearing fair, the system is rigged to largely ensure that Northwest/Delta retains its near-monopoly control of the MSP airport.
Obviously the airports have some say in it. To serve a route, you need to negotiate with the airport operators at both ends of the route for take-off and landing slots and gate services, and the airport operators may allocate these in the manner you describe.
But that’s not the end of the story. Whereas domestically, most countries have liberalised their air transport and adopted an open sky policy whereby any airline may serve any route it gets airport slots for (don’t know about the U.S., the EU did), restrictions are still frequent in international air transport. These restrictions may stipulate that, in addition to airport slots, carriers need a licence to operate a particular route, and these licences may be limited in number on the basis of some agreement between the countries involved.
There is an ongoing debate within the World Trade Organization about the extent to which these restrictions are lawful under WTO law or, if they are, whether WTO law should be amended to ban such restrictions. Currently, traffic rights seem to be explicitly excluded from WTO law, leaving the issue to bilateral negotiations between the countries involved, but this may change.
While the treaty or other government agreement must exist to permit flights between two countries, the US government and the Japanese government do not decide who gets to fly in and out between LAX and Norita. The respective airport authorities negotiate directly with the airlines, as I mentioned previously.
According to the State Department, air transport between Japan and the U.S. is still covered by a 1952 agreement (PDF), as amended. That 1952 agreement contains provisions about “designation” by national authorities which they need in order to operate a particular route, and this designation may be withheld or revoked by either side. I suppose it is this designation which is meant when people refer to air rights or route rights, and this designation seems to go beyond a mere contracting for take-off and landing slots and gate services with airport operators - that you need those goes without saying.
In the absence of an agreement between the United States and Japan (for this example), yes, the governments do get to decide which airlines get to fly between these two airports. The airlines apply for routings (in some way), and the Department of Transportation decides which airlines get which routings and how often they can fly. This is in addition to negotiating with the airports’ authorites for the actual timeslots and gate space and minutiae of that sort. Remember that there is no “anything goes” agreement between the United States and Japan, like (as mentioned above, thanks) exists inside the European Union.
As mentioned in the 1952 agreement between Japan and ths United States that Schnitte has found, in Article 2, section b:
The contracting parties are the United States and Japan, and it is clear that it is they that are designating the airlines. I didn’t read much farther, because it turns out the treaty is boring, but the treaty says they have the power to choose who gets to fly.
ISTM that there is full cabotage within the European Union. I remember seeing lots of Lufthansa planes in Milan that flew to destinations like Paris and Barcelona.
Yeah, according to the Wikipedia (Cabotage - Wikipedia), the European Union is pretty much one of those anything goes places, at least for EU nations. If I’m not mistaken, the United Kingdom and New Zealand have a cabotage agreement as well, but I can’t remember where I read that. Also, I think there is some sort of limited cabotage agreement between the United States and New Zealand, so that New Zealand’s airlines can serve passengers on the east coast. (Otherwise the distances would be too great, AKL-JFK is almost 9,000 miles.)
Governments absolutely do get involved, and it frequently rests on international bilateral agreements, or matters relating to the ICAO Convention. I regularly get announcements about changes to air operator licences from the Canadian Transportation Agency. For example:
So as you can see, governments certainly do get involved. In fact, a tiff over landing rights between Canada and the United Arab Emirates recently spilled over into a diplomatic fuss that resulted in Canada losing access to one of the middle-east staging bases it uses to support operations in Afghanistan, and new visa restrictions by UAE on Canadian citizens.