The United Arab Emirates concludes new air services arrangements with Romania, Qatar and Iran

The United Arab Emirates has concluded new air services arrangements with Romania (announced on 20 October 2008), Qatar (announced on 30 November 2008) and Iran (announced on 11 December 2008)(see previous post).

The latter two arrangements have capacity restrictions. Although that with Romania is described as "open skies" there is uncertainty about passenger capacity for fifth freedom services.

John Byerly speaks on US aviation negotiating approach

On 4 December 2008 John Byerly, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Transportation Affairs at the US State Department gave a very good summary of the US approach to air services negotiations in a speech to an Airports Council International - North America (ACI-NA) International Aviation Issues Seminar.

Canada negotiates new aviation agreement with the European Union

On 9 December 2008 Canada and the European Commission announced that they had completed the negotiation of a new air services agreement. The Commission's Q&A provides further details (see previous post).

An open exchange of third/fourth freedom rights would be followed by further exchanges of rights in three additional phases if there is a progressive opening up of airline investment opportunities. Phase two would provide for seventh freedom cargo opportunities, phase three for fifth freedom (beyond) opportunities and phase four for an exchange of cabotage rights.

Media coverage on 10 December included stories in the Globe and Mail, and the Star (HT to Aviation Law Prof Blog). On 9 December there were also stories in the Financial Post NEW and on CBC NEW.

The fuel spot price "super spike" collapse

I have continued monitoring the Singapore spot prices of international bunker fuels (jet used in aircraft and residual fuel oil (RFO) used in ships) in US$ and NZ$. The following four graphs show the results for this decade including November 2008 (see previous post for data sources). The second and fourth of the graphs are indexed with a base on 100 in January 2000.

The term "super spike" in relation to oil price movements was reported on 21 May 2008 by the International Herald Tribune to have been used by a Goldman Sachs analyst, Arjun Murti, who was predicting that the price of oil could go as high as US$200 and would stay above US$100 into 2011. Bloomberg reported on 6 May 2008 that Murti first used the term "super spike" in March 2005.

Murti's latest views on the price of oil were covered in a 12 December 2008 post NEW on the Alphaville weblog from the Financial Times.

Australian Government releases Aviation Green Paper

On 2 December 2008 the Australian Government released a Green Paper (discussion document) as part of the process of developing a National Aviation Policy. This is to be followed by the release of a White Paper next year (see previous post).