Air Transport Policy

In order that our aviation policies can sharpen the competitive edge of Macao’s aviation industry, we have always adopted liberal air transport policies to make it easy for both local and foreign carriers to do business here.

We are committed to adopting “open skies” policies as the ultimate guiding principle and employing flexible approaches to negotiate and sign air services agreements hence to create favorable conditions for further developing air transport. We are committed to putting public interest first when reviewing and approving aviation entities’ various applications.

Among the air services agreements which we have signed or initialed with foreign countries, many of the agreements are embodied with liberal provisions, including fifth freedom traffic rights, multiple designation of airlines, unlimited capacity entitlement, principal place of business as airline nationality and so on. In fact, the liberal standard that we adopt is the most liberal one listed by International Civil Aviation Organization.

We adopt the international practice in both scheduled and non-scheduled flight approvals (be it local or foreign airline). For scheduled services, we approve an application based on the provisions as set out in the bilateral air services agreement signed between Macao and the relevant foreign country. For non-scheduled services, we make our approval decision based on our general policy that charter flights are not normally considered if the requested route is already being served by scheduled services, unless the corresponding scheduled services cannot satisfy the current demand.