EU mulls emergency plan to keep UK planes flying after no deal Brexit

UK Telegraph Online writes that the European Union is considering emergency plans to keep British planes flying in the EU after a no deal Brexit. 

EU agreements allow airlines to operate and land in other member states of the bloc but Britain will leave those after Brexit, even if there is a deal. 

There are fears that British airlines would be grounded if negotiators failed to strike a deal because there are no World Trade Organisation rules for aviation for Britain to fall back on.

Yesterday it emerged that the European Commission had told 27 EU diplomats to mull the possibility of a skeleton agreement with the UK as a contingency measure to keep British flights in the air.

The article claims slides shown to the diplomats called for a ‘bare bones’ UK-EU agreement that would include traffic rights and safety standards recognition. 

This would ‘ensure basic connectivity’ continued despite Britain leaving EU aviation agreements without replacement deals being agreed.

The piece suggests that if Theresa May can successfully negotiate a transition period with the EU, which will ‘deep-freeze’ Britain’s membership of the EU after Brexit, she will buy valuable time for her negotiators to strike those replacement agreements. 

Airlines with headquarters in the EU will be able to continue flying in the bloc after Brexit. In July, easyJet opened an Austrian headquarters to safeguard its ability fly in the EU.