Who authorizes or not the overflight of an aircraft in a certain country?

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What person or entity is in charge of allowing or denying the overflight of an aircraft through a certain airspace of a country? We analyze it in this special issue.

In recent days, several press releases have emerged that speak of a particular flight that needed to get from country A to country B and to do so it had to fly over different nations and their corresponding airspaces..

Faced with the refusal of some of them, they have asked me who denies it, why they can do it and another of the doubts as if some international law is being violated.

Given these doubts, I have prepared this post that will try to resolve these and other doubts related to this very interesting and seldom or never discussed topic..

Overflight of an aircraft

Air space

We start with the basics, An air space is considered to be a part of the Earth's atmosphere that includes both the land and water surface that is controlled and regulated by a sovereign nation..

Airspaces can be considered controlled spaces, not controlled, special and others to be defined by each state and is defined based on its use and type of aircraft operations existing there classified in 7 spaces by ICAO.

Although there is no exact international regulation, it is considered that the maximum height of sovereignty of these spaces is 30 kilometers high above the respective country.

international law

Everything we deal with in this post is mainly based, in the Convention on International Civil Aviation, which was signed in Chicago in 1944 by the signatory states. In this, the sovereignty and recognition of a State over its airspace is legally defined in its first article.:

"The Contracting States recognize that every State has full and exclusive sovereignty over the airspace above its territory".

Thus, in this article it is defined that the airspace is an integral part of the territory of a country., so an overflight or landing of any type of foreign aircraft is limited or prohibited, unless the state owner of the airspace and aeronautical infrastructure allows it under previously signed bilateral agreements or with prior consent or authorization that could be a special permit depending on the case.

Other international agreements apply such as the Ibero Convention – american stripe 1926, where it was stated that:

“The Contracting States shall have complete freedom to permit or prohibit the circulation over their territory of aircraft possessing the nationality of a non-contracting State.”.

So in conclusion, a State has all the authority to deny the overflight or landing of any aircraft with freedom of reasons to do so thanks to its total sovereignty over its airspace, where generally this process is handled directly by the corresponding local aeronautical authority.

military aircraft

The same Chicago Convention specifies in its article 3:

They are the ones used for military service, customs or police. The Convention, which only applies to civil aircraft, does not apply to it.. To be able to circulate in the skies of another State, they require a special authorization.

Process

Each country has its own policies or legislation in this regard that are adapted to whether or not they are signatories of the aforementioned agreements and others that may be part of them..

It is therefore, that the general procedure can change, but its simple basis is as follows, emphasizing that the overflight service over a country has a value that can border the $200 dollars per flight:

Civil

• For an aircraft to fly over the airspace of a foreign country to its nationality, must request permission to do so before the overflight from the respective aeronautical authority.
• Usually, that can be done with a form, phone call or email, for which the aircraft operator must present the corresponding papers requested by each authority.

Military

• The military procedure is different, This is based on communications and overflight authorization requests that are handled directly between states or the Armed Forces.. Ej: aircraft of the Air Force of a country X asks the Air Force of country Y to authorize its overflight.
• In this case, the Air Force And it is the one that carries out the authorization and coordination with the air traffic control service civilian reporting on this overflight, flight plan, Dear, etc.

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