Latin American countries generally permit U.S. carriers to land, but often prohibit them from carrying products from that country to another. Even though the bulk of the European aviation market is nominally open, a complex web of local restrictions still disrupts the flow of goods and services. The Asia-Pacific market, one of the hot spots of global economic growth, remains a tangled knot of competing rules for aviation. Meanwhile, many countries with which the United States has bilateral agreements that permit landing rights still restrict the number of carriers that can serve them. Brazil is one of these.
China is the most prominent.
The departments of Transportation and State deserve credit for their open-skies initiative, which is negotiating more bilateral agreements and opening more markets, one at a time, to air transport. But their success has stretched the bilateral system to the limits of its potential. The instant demands of global markets and the enormous flow of goods and services have overwhelmed the bilateral system. Secretary of Transportation Slater recognizes this, and is moving the debate in this direction. It s time to replace the patchwork of bilateral agreements with an international aviation system that matches today s way of doing business.