ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the effect the aerospace plane will have on the already contentious issue of air traffic rights, given the highly commercial trends within the air transport industry in modern times, particularly in the face of modern commercial tools such as alliances between mega-carriers and code-sharing agreements. An aerospace plane is a hypersonic, single-stage, orbiting reusable vehicle that takes off and lands horizontally on a conventional runway. This is a broad definition, but it serves to cover various technical configurations and models of aerospace planes. The aerospace plane will be constructed using aeronautical and space technologies, and would be able – and indeed required– to fly both in the atmosphere and outer space. Speaking from a purely commercial point of view, it follows logically that an aerospace plane which transports persons and goods between States should be considered an aircraft, even if it traverses through space at a certain point in its flight.
