Asian airlines to give flight plans to China after airspace zone created

Tuesday, 26 November 2013 00:01 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

REUTERS: Asian aviation officials said airlines would have to inform China of flight plans before entering airspace over waters disputed with

Japan, forcing carriers to acknowledge China’s authority over a newly declared “Air Defence Identification Zone”. China published coordinates for the zone on the weekend. The area, about two-thirds the size of the United Kingdom, covers most of the East China Sea and the skies over a group of uninhabited islands at the centre of a bitter row between Beijing and Tokyo. Japan and its close ally, the United States, sharply criticised the move, which experts said was aimed at chipping away at Tokyo’s claim to administrative control over the area including the tiny uninhabited islands known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China. While China said the new rules would not affect “normal operations” for international flights, it added that it would take “defensive emergency measures” against aircraft that failed to identify themselves properly. China’s latest move could help spread the view that Japan was losing administrative control of the area, said Hiroko Maeda, research fellow at Japanese think-tank the PHP Institute. “China has already been sending its ships (there). It is clear China is trying to undermine Japan’s administrative control. Now they are stepping up their effort in the sky as well,” Maeda said. Japan protested the weekend move, warning of an escalation into the “unexpected” if Beijing enforced the rules. US Secretary of State John Kerry urged China to exercise restraint. While Washington does not take a position on the sovereignty of the islands, it recognises that Japan has administrative control over them and is therefore bound by treaty to defend Japan in the event of an armed conflict. In a continuing war of words, China’s Defence Ministry said on Monday it had lodged protests with the US and Japanese embassies in Beijing over the criticism from Washington and Tokyo of the zone. A transport ministry official in Seoul said South Korean planes flying in the new zone would notify China’s civil aviation authorities of their flight plans.