The Five Freedoms of Aviation

You can't legally sell domestic flights in a foreign country. (for these purposes, the EU is one country) This is true for Australia, for India, for the USA, for the EU - an airline like Delta can fly to Sydney from LA but not sell domestic flights from Sydney to Melbourne. (Or, for that matter, international flights between Sydney and Singapore) However, there is a catch! Airliners did not used to have quite the range they do today, and so the treaties allow things like refueling stops. And they (sometimes!) allow passengers to embark/disembark at those stops - but those passengers still have to be flying the international leg, or else it would be a domestic flight. There's a Wendover video from years ago that's relevant: ▶ this video

The five freedoms of aviation are: 1) The right to fly over a foreign country without landing. 2) The right to refuel or carry out maintenance in a foreign country without embarking or disembarking passengers or cargo. 3) The right to fly from one's own country to another country. 4) The right to fly from another country to one's own. 5) The right to fly between two foreign countries on a flight originating or ending in one's own country. This video has a lot of good info on it: ▶ this video And wikipedia page: link

Norwegian is technically an EU airline because despite the name they're also headquartered in EU countries. This is so because being EU-based they're free to use all EU airports to base flights out of, which they use to good extent to make flights between the US and the French Caribbean islands, something that would be impossible had they been solely HQd in Norway :) Check out this video about it (Norwegian starts at about 10 minutes in): ▶ this video edit: turns out they're registed in several countries, not just Denmark.

My guess is this might be similar to how company's sue people for trademark violations, even when they are not doing any direct damage to the brand i.e. to protect themselves from future legal liability. If too many customers use the hidden city in a foreign airline flight, they might be found not be in compliance with route agreements. Some background on the subject: ▶ this video

I was rolling my eyes at the subtitle. The article devolved from there. Some great (sometimes indirect) information on why the 747 and to a lesser extent the A380 are being phased out, from my new favorite YouTube channel, Wendover Productions: The Economics of Long-Haul Flights: link ETOPS: Explained link Politics of Aviation / 5 Freedoms of Aviation: ▶ this video