On Oct. 17, the signing took place of a momentous agreement in global air transport. The world barely noticed. With the war in Ukraine, the ongoing effects of the pandemic and political turmoil seemingly everywhere, it's perhaps no surprise that an agreement between the European Union (EU) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to fully open airline access between the two blocs did not attract headlines. Nevertheless, the ASEAN-EU Comprehensive Air Transport Agreement (AE CATA) is the world's first bloc-to-bloc air transport agreement and its timing could not be better. AE CATA was ratified in Bali, Indonesia, almost exactly 30 years after the world's first Open Skies agreement was forged, between the US and the Netherlands, in 1992. As with AE CATA, the world did not react with awe at the time. The then-director general of civil aviation at the Netherlands Ministry of Transport, Jan Willem Week, remembers how he and colleagues in Washington DC looking to mark the occasion resorted to having their photo taken next to a full-size cardboard cutout of then-US President George H. Bush that was standing outside the White House gates.
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