Freedoms of The Air - Eighth Freedom (consecutive Cabotage)

Eighth Freedom (consecutive Cabotage)

The unofficial eighth freedom is the right to carry passengers or cargo between two or more points in one foreign country and is also known as cabotage. It is extremely rare outside of Europe. The main real life example of eighth-freedom rights is the European Union, which has granted such rights between all of its member states. Other examples of an exchange of this right include the Single Aviation Market (SAM) established between Australia and New Zealand in 1996 and the 2001 Protocol to the Multilateral Agreement on the Liberalization of International Air Transportation (MALIAT) between Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore. Otherwise, such rights have usually only been granted in isolated instances where the domestic air network is very underdeveloped. A notable instance was Pan Am's authority to fly between Frankfurt and West Berlin from the 1950s to 1980s, although political circumstances, not the state of the domestic air network, dictated this - only airlines of the Allied Powers of France, the United Kingdom and the United States had the right to land aircraft in West Berlin. In 2005, the United Kingdom and New Zealand concluded an agreement granting unlimited cabotage rights. Given the distance between the two countries, the agreement can be seen as reflecting a political principle rather than an expectation that these rights will be taken up in the near future. New Zealand had previously exchanged eighth-freedom rights with Ireland in 1999.

In the 1950s through the early 1970s, BOAC flights from London to New York to Los Angeles to Honolulu permitted London origination passengers to make stopovers inside the U.S. In the 1980s and 1990s, El Al Israeli airlines had similar rights for passengers to/from Tel Aviv to Los Angeles, which stopped in New York. JAT Yugoslav Airlines had similar rights in the 1980s from Zagreb to Chicago to Los Angeles.

Qantas flies from Sydney to Los Angeles with continuing service to New York-JFK. Qantas is not permitted to sell standalone tickets on the Los Angeles-New York part of this trip, but it does sell tickets that start in New York and connect in Los Angeles to other Qantas flights on to Brisbane or Melbourne. United Airlines flies passengers from Melbourne to Sydney, to connect to its LAX and SFO services.