How exactly are such things worked out? By the airlines or by nations? I am in Narita Airport in Japan. Just landed from Newark. We flew over Russia. How is it worked out that we can fly over Russia?
Does Russia track all flights, do all nations track all flights? I seem to remember a few years ago that a flight was shot down inside of Chinese airspace, but I think that was a military plane, and one assumes different rules apply.
Who arranges rights to foreign airspace?
Cartooniverse
You may be thinking of Korean Airlines KAL 007, a passenger jet that was shot down by Russia with great loss of life.
There was also a US military reconnaissance plane that was forced to land in China in 2001. No loss of life, but some disagreement over who had the right to be where.
Well, commercial flights are all scheduled and agreed to between the destination, departure and operating countries (if different.) If United wants to fly from LA to Sydney via Auckland then it needs to come to an agreement with both the New Zealand and Australian authorites to allow the schedule. Note the agreement is for a schedule, not a single flight. For enroute airspace, progressive clearances are coordinated between the controllers of the adjacent airspace. Presumably there are long standing agreements between all of the countries to allow legitimate commercial traffic.
There was also an Iranian commercial jet that was shot down by the USA, killing all 290 passengers. Iran Air Flight 655 - Wikipedia
Countries get paid for overflight rights and have full say in the matter. I was once on a flight from Bangkok to Frankfurt, when we crossed over a small portion of the then-USSR north of Afghanistan. The crew ordered everyone to close all the window shades for the 20 minutes that we were in Soviet airspace.
And what was that supposed to accomplice? Special stealth materials in the shades? Or didn’t the Russkis want anyone to be able to photograph the ground?
Pretty much - in the USSR days, it was illegal to take photographs from the air.
Cool. More trivia added to the brain allowing me to win at Trivial Pursuit.
It’s my understanding that the Soviets allowed no accurate maps to be made of pretty much any part of the country (I think we didn’t find out just how distorted every publicly available map of, say, Moscow, was until after the USSR fell). I’d imagine the aerial photography ban was part of that.
The Vincennes incident was pretty egregious, but it’s not quite on point — the Strait of Hormuz is nowhere near the United States’ airspace. KAL 007 is just the most recent example of a commercial airliner getting into trouble by flying into the wrong airspace, though; other such incidents include:
[ul][li]1955: El Al 402, shot down by Bulgaria after going off-course[/li][li]1973: Libyan Arab Airlines 114, which got lost in a sandstorm and was shot down over the Sinai peninsula by Israeli jets [/li][*]1978: Korean Air 902, forced to land after making a wrong turn at Greenland and ending up in Soviet airspace[/ul]
I don’t know how the political/commercial part of the agreements work, but in the US there are large areas controlled by en route centers. When a flight is over a center, that center’s controllers are responsible for the flight. If the flight leaves that center to enter another, or enters a TRACON (Terminal radar approach control) which manages arrivals and departures at a block of airports, there is a handoff protocol between centers. I would imagine that other countries do the same thing. (I do not know who controls flights that are over open ocean.)
You can bet that a country knows about every aircraft that is flying in its airspace, if it has any air traffic control or military capability. That is, they know there is something there, and they get mighty nervous if it’s unidentified.
There is a joint US/UK military installation on the at Mussandam, on the very tip of the Horn of Arabia (nominally on Omani territory), overflight of which has never been permitted except by Oman Air jets.
Not on the EP-3 but the Chinese fighter pilot was killed.
By an unarmed recon jet? Because of a collision, I’m guessing…
I misread the wiki article and thought he had made it to safety as well. My mistake.
To answer the OP, there is an international governing body called the International Civil Aviation Organization, which is attached to the UN, and serves as an international forum for the arrangements necessary between countries.
By and large, nations realize that commercial aviation brings commerce, and commerce brings money (either in the form of taxes or an infusion of capital). Thus (and in theory), nations are generally accepted as wanting commercial aviation services, so they’ll negotiate to get it. For this, they’ll draft up national codes and regulations to promote it, including certification of airlines, pilots, and airframes [sub]and the business practices of all those too[/sub]. It’s that regulatory stuff that the airlines then have to flesh out if they want to fly into or out of a country. Sure, Tooniverse Airlines can fly your cargo and people within the United States all it wants, but if it wants to fly that stuff to France and pick up a shipment of escargo [sub]for cargo, get it![/sub], it then has to meet all ‘o’ France’s rules of the skies.
So, to answer your question(s), national governments meet to agree to standards of international commercial aviation (a lot of it is based on the available technology of the time). These agreements are enforced by the national agencies who have the teeth to enforce such agreements. The airlines then have to meet the regulations of the national agencies. As far as the actual flight itself? That’s handled by each nations air traffic control systems. . .
Interests in commerce dicate that flights will happen, but individual nations’ specifics on what happens during those flights are subtle–the methods all have to be within the guidelines or commercial air navigation laid out by the ICAO. It is possible that nations will not allow flights into other/their countries for political reasons (i.e. the US and Cuba). That’s more political in nature, but is again enforced by the national agencies, and if necessary, but the nations’ Air Forces as well.
Military flights are a whole other thread, but I do have friends that worked in CAOCs and handled the various international clearances for flights. Things for them got hectic at times, especially if there were weapons involved, or if there was hazardous cargo onboard.
Tripler
Have I confused you yet?
I’ve done a couple of exams in Flight Law for my PPL, and we were taught that Article 5 of the Chicago Convention permits any signatory country’s civil aircraft to fly over the territory of any other signatory country. However this does not apply to scheduled aircraft, which need to get permission to do so.
So, in theory, I can transit Russian or US airspace in a Cessna 150 without asking anyone’s permission. I don’t know how that would play out in practice.
I’ve been flying between Europe and Japan about once a year for the last 10 years or so, usually with KLM. About three years ago there was a change in the route.
Previously, we had flown eastward across Russia, across the Sea of Japan coast, and then south to Kansai (passing to the east of the Korean peninsula).
More recently, the plane has taken a more direct route: east across Russia as before, then cutting south across Mongolia and China, then west to east across the Yellow Sea and South Korea.
The difference is that while we previously did not fly over China, we do now. We still avoid North Korea, however.
Going back further in time, flights between Japan and Europe used to avoid the USSR and fly the opposite way around the world, with a stopover in Alaska.
This would help explain Mathias Rust’s little endeavor. 
Tripler
“Yeah, what the hell, let’s turn right at Oslo. . . I’m just going for a visit.”
Hi I’m back. Don’t you HATE Dopers who start threads and never return? I do ! 
It’s 7:49 p.m. Friday here. Just now back online. Great info, and a tip 'o the hat to Tripler. I was indeed thinking of KAL 007.
Depending on the tail wind, we may do what we did last November when I was in Japan going home. We flew the fat way, across the Pacific. The weather was such that we had an immense tailwind and we flew 14 hours TO Tokyo from Newark over the top of the globe, and 10 hours BACK to Newark straight across the Pacific. That’s a hell of a tail wind.
ETA: What defines “air space” in terms of altitude?? At what point does a nation not own the air? Is there a vertial equivalent to the 12-mile limit?
As the Perfect One™ indicates, your space is good insofar as it doesn’t bother you directly. It becomes national airspace above that. It becomes outer space above the range of the ability of the nation to exercise power over it. I think the “high seas” follows the same concept, except humans can’t naturally abide in space floating around as easily as they can on the water.
Tripler
I’ve got friends that fly 60k+ feet over countries. In a U-2 [sub]yes, we’ve still got 'em around[/sub]