Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

19. Department of Transportation · Notable

Bar foreign carriers using Russian airspace from advantage on U.S. routes

Attempted

631 19. Department of Transportation

“Specifically, so long as U.S. carriers are not able to fly over Russian airspace, the U.S. should not allow foreign carriers serving markets in East Asia and South Asia to enjoy a competitive advantage by continuing to allow them to fly to the U.S.”

What has happened

  1. Attempted

    DOT issued Order 2025-10-3, an Order to Show Cause proposing to condition every foreign air carrier permit and exemption held by Air China, Beijing Capital, China Eastern, China Southern, Hainan, Sichuan and Xiamen on compliance with Article 2(4) of the 1980 U.S.–China Civil Air Transport Agreement — in terms, to prohibit those carriers from using Russian airspace on passenger and combination services between China and the United States. The order recites the competitive imbalance the Quote describes: Russia closed its airspace to U.S. carriers on 2022-05-17 and Chinese carriers face no such prohibition. It is tentative: the condition would take effect thirty days after a final order, and no final order appears in docket DOT-OST-2025-1822, whose last filing is dated 2025-10-16.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • attempted, not partial or done: an order to show cause states a tentative finding and changes nothing until a final order issues. Seven carriers objected within the two business days the order allowed; DOT denied Air China’s motion for more time on 2025-10-14 (Order 2025-10-4). No final order was found on regulations.gov, and DOT continued approving the same carriers’ U.S. schedules in docket DOT-OST-2020-0052 through 2026-03-26, which is consistent with the condition never having taken effect.
  • The ask is broader than the order: the Quote reaches “foreign carriers serving markets in East Asia and South Asia”, and the order reaches only the seven Chinese combination carriers. Even a final order would therefore be partial rather than done.
  • Route worth reusing: DOT’s aviation economic orders are not Federal Register documents. They are reachable through api.regulations.gov (which answers on DEMO_KEY but rate-limits after a handful of calls), and the order PDFs download cleanly from downloads.regulations.gov/<document-id>/attachment_1.pdf, which is allowlisted Primary and readable where transportation.gov is not.
Action
restrict
Object
Foreign carrier access to U.S. markets over Russian airspace
ID
1732