Bermuda II Agreement

Bermuda II was a bilateral air transport agreement between the governments of the United Kingdom and the United States signed on 23 July 1977 as a renegotiation of the original 1946 Bermuda air services agreement. A new open skies agreement was signed by the United States and the European Union (EU) (of which the United Kingdom was part) on 30 April 2007 and came into effect on 30 March 2008, thus replacing Bermuda II.

The original 1946 Bermuda agreement took its name from the island where UK and US transport officials met to negotiate a new, inter-governmental air services agreement. That agreement, which was (relative to modern agreements) highly restrictive at the insistence of the British negotiators who feared that "giving in" to US demands for a "free-for-all" would lead to the then financially superior US airlines' total domination of the global air transport industry, was the world's first bilateral air services agreement. It became a blueprint for all subsequent air services agreements.

Bermuda II was revised several times since its signing, most recently in 1995. Although Bermuda II was much less restrictive than the original Bermuda agreement it replaced, it was widely regarded as a highly restrictive agreement that contrasted with the principle of open skies against the background of continuing liberalization of the legal framework governing the air transport industry in various parts of the world.