First freedom — the right to fly across another state's territory without landing: the pure overflight right.
Second freedom — the right to land in another state for non-traffic purposes: fuel or maintenance, with no passengers or cargo taken on or set down. These first two are the technical freedoms of the Transit Agreement, and they are the scheduled-service counterpart of the non-scheduled rights the previous lesson met.
Third freedom — the right to set down, in another state, traffic (passengers, mail and cargo) taken on in the home state.
Fourth freedom — the right to take on, in another state, traffic destined for the home state. Third and fourth almost always travel together in bilateral agreements: the outbound and homebound halves of an international route.
Fifth freedom — the right to carry traffic between two foreign states on a service that starts or ends in the home state: the onward leg of a long route, selling seats between two countries that are both abroad.
Commercial practice has since named further freedoms (sixth through ninth, combinations and stand-alone versions of the above ending in cabotage), but they are labels of convenience, not rights from any of the Chicago instruments; the exam works with the five above.
The Tokyo Convention and the commander
International law also had to deal with trouble inside the cabin. The Tokyo Convention of 1963 covers offences and other acts committed on board aircraft, and its practical heart is the authority it gives the pilot-in-command (PIC): the pilot designated by the operator as being in command and charged with the safe conduct of the flight. For the commander's powers, the Convention treats the aircraft as in flight from the moment all its external doors are closed following embarkation until the moment any door is opened for disembarkation, so the authority exists at the gate with the doors shut, not only in the air.
When the commander has reasonable grounds to believe that a person has committed, or is about to commit, an act jeopardising the safety of the aircraft, of persons or property on board, or good order and discipline, the Convention allows a graduated response:
Impose reasonable measures — including restraint, where necessary to protect the safety of the aircraft or of persons or property on board, to maintain good order and discipline, or to enable delivery of the person to authorities.
Call for help — the commander may require or authorise the assistance of the other crew members, and may request, but not require, the assistance of passengers to restrain the person.
Disembark the person — in the territory of any state in which the aircraft lands, when the flight cannot safely continue with the person on board.
Deliver the person — to the competent authorities of a contracting state when the commander believes a serious offence under the penal law of the state of registration has been committed, reporting the facts and evidence.
The Convention protects the people who act: for measures taken in accordance with it, neither the commander, nor crew members, nor passengers who assisted may be held responsible in any proceeding on account of the treatment of the person: without that shield, no commander could afford to act at all. Hijacking and sabotage grew their own, later conventions and a whole ICAO Annex; those belong to this course's security module.
The ticket, the baggage and the airline's liability
When a passenger buys a flight, private international law takes over from the treaties between states. The rules come from the Warsaw Convention of 1929 and its modern successor, the Montreal Convention of 1999, and the first point is what the paperwork means: the passenger ticket, the baggage identification tag and the air waybill for cargo are each evidence of a contract of carriage between the customer and the carrier: issuing the document is a form of concluding the contract. The second point follows: if the carrier fails to issue the document, the contract is unaffected: it still exists and remains valid, and the carrier cannot escape (or lose) its rights and liabilities by pointing at missing paperwork.
Liability for baggage is capped. The limits are written in special drawing rights (SDRs) (the currency basket unit of the International Monetary Fund, used so the figure keeps its value across currencies), and the cap applies per passenger, for destruction, loss, damage and delay of baggage together: 1,288 SDRs under the 2019 review of the limits, raised to 1,519 SDRs by the review effective 28 December 2024 (the Convention has the limits reviewed for inflation every five years). A passenger who declares a higher value for checked baggage at hand-over, against a supplementary charge, lifts the cap to the declared sum. Beyond baggage, the same Convention also caps delay damages and governs death and injury compensation: details the exam leaves to the numbers above.
Passenger rights in the European Union
On top of the Montreal system, the EU adds its own consumer layer: Regulation (EC) No 261/2004 on passenger rights. It covers flights departing from the EU on any carrier, and flights into the EU on an EU carrier; for them, a delay, a cancellation or a denial of boarding (typically from overbooking) carries fixed consequences:
Fixed compensation — 250 euros per passenger up to 1,500 km, 400 euros from 1,500 to 3,500 km and for longer flights inside the EU, 600 euros beyond 3,500 km. It is owed for denied boarding always, and for cancellation at short notice and, through the courts' reading of the Regulation, long delay at destination: for those two, unless the airline proves extraordinary circumstances that could not have been avoided, such as severe weather. Denied boarding has no such escape: overbooking is the airline's own doing.
Care — meals and refreshments in reasonable relation to the waiting time, hotel accommodation and transfers where an overnight stay becomes necessary, and communication (owed regardless of the cause).
Reimbursement or re-routing — the passenger's choice between the ticket price back and an alternative routing to the destination.
For the operator the Regulation is a direct cost exposure on every disrupted flight, which is why irregular operations involve not just crew scheduling but a legal department, and why the choice between delaying and cancelling a flight is partly a question of law.
IATA
Not every organisation in aviation is made of states. The International Air Transport Association (IATA) is the trade association of the world's airlines, founded in 1945. Its objectives: to promote safe, regular and economical air transport for the benefit of the peoples of the world, to foster air commerce and study the problems connected with it, to provide the means of collaboration among the air transport enterprises themselves, and to cooperate with ICAO and the other international organisations. Where ICAO aligns the rules between governments, IATA aligns the practice between airlines: interline ticketing, settlement systems, operational standards. A pilot meets both worlds daily without noticing the seam.
EASA and the European rulebook
Within Europe, the ICAO framework is turned into directly binding law by the European Union, and the technical engine of that system is the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA), seated in Cologne and established in its current form by Regulation (EU) 2018/1139, the Basic Regulation. EASA's objective is to establish and maintain a high and uniform level of civil aviation safety in Europe, together with a high level of environmental protection. Its role in European civil aviation:
it drafts the technical rules, delivering opinions the European Commission turns into law;
it certifies aeronautical products, issuing the type certificates for aircraft and engines and approving design organisations;
it conducts standardisation inspections of the national aviation authorities to check that EU rules are applied uniformly;
and it collects and analyses safety data for the Union.