Originally Posted by
uanj
Earlier this year it looked like there was a window of opportunity to approve more flights but there were too many conflicting interests on the US side. I actually think a US ban on all flights to the US that overfly Russia could be a way forward. It removes the biggest obstacle to increasing flights at the moment.
I am drawing attention to this point from
uanj again because I agree that it makes sense.
-as long as airlines from India and the Middle East continue to enjoy Russia overflight privileges to/from the US, China is absolutely justified in crying foul
-there are no laws that prohibit these overflights, but the US could presumably put one in place without much resistance
-if this were to happen, the Russia issue would become non-negotiable (i.e. take it off the table)
-then, the debate would refocus on the protectionist principles that have defined it for the past 20 years
As an aside, I read through the following wiki on the history of the US-China air services agreement yesterday. Even by wikipedia standards, it is poorly written (e.g. lots of present tense language for things that happened ~15 years ago, lacking detail, and surely contains outright inaccuracies), but it provides a decent picture of how we got from there to where we are now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_ro...ates_and_China