The US Government plans to use a forthcoming meeting to spark discussions on broadening the scope of current bilateral open skies agreements into regional or global arrangements. It has previously been reluctant to do this.
The gathering of international transport and aviation authorities will take place in Chicago on 6-7 December.
Speaking to Flight International, US Secretary of Transportation Rodney Slater, says: "The objective of the meeting is to begin a dialogue looking beyond open skies and the bilateral architecture that govern those relations so far. We're looking at multilateral, fully open and seamless system for the world.
"This is not going to be an American plan, we're just providing the table to debate, discuss and deliberate."
Washington has invited all 36 countries with which the USA currently has open skies agreements, along with around 70 nations with liberalised bilateral air service arrangements, to its Aviation in the 21st Century - Beyond Open Skies conference.
High on the list of attendees for the meeting are the UK and Brazil, with which the USA is trying to hammer out liberalised agreements.
The USA claims it wants to elevate individual open skies agreements to a regional level in either Europe or South America. The European Union is already seeking to override bilateral agreements and negotiate for its member countries as a bloc.
"We'll probably focus regionally on Mercursor member countries ," says Slater, speaking after signing an open skies agreement with Chile. The USA has already signed an agreement with Argentina to start from next September. Other Mercursor members include Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay.
The USA also has agreements with Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama and Peru and has opened contacts with Venezuela.
This range could be expanded to include the North American Free Trade Association, where the USA has an agreement "moving towards a full open skies agreement" with Canada and the world's biggest liberalised codeshare deal with Mexico.
Source: Flight International
