The dissertation is devoted to the analysis of theoretical and practical aspects of international legal regulation of civil aviation, research of features of legal status and mode of airspace use by civil aviation (including drones), protection of environment from pollution due to civil aviation, clarification of problematic issues of international legal regulation of civil aviation at the universal, regional and bilateral levels, the formation and development of an institutional mechanism in the aviation sector, the peculiarities of the formation and current development of conventional standards of liability of air carriers and aircraft operators and international legal protection of civil aviation from acts of unlawful interference into its activities.
The study proves that the formation of the main conceptual (doctrinal) provisions on the legal status and use of airspace took place in the early twentieth century. Consolidation of the principle of full and exclusive sovereignty of the state over the airspace above its territory, after the end of the First World War in Article 1 of the Paris Convention of 1919 on Air Navigation, as well as in the Chicago Convention of 1944 on International Civil Aviation formed international the legal basis for the use of airspace by civil aviation. The further development of air transportation and air transport, the beginning of the space age and the emergence of a wide range of types of aerospace activities have exacerbated the problem of solving the outdated issue of delimitation of airspace and space. Today, this global problem of modern international law has been exacerbated by the existence of two mutually exclusive concepts of delimitation: spatial and functional.
It is established that the current issues of international legal regulation of civil aviation also include legal issues of man-made pollution due to the activities of civil aviation and the use of drones.
It is proved that the international legal regulation of civil aviation is based on the convention standards formed during the Chicago Diplomatic Conference in 1944 and enshrined in the 1944 Chicago Convention on International Civil Aviation, the Agreement on Transit in International Air Transport and the International Air Transport Agreement. At the same time, the principle of liberalization of international air transportation, enshrined in the Declaration of Global Principles for the Liberalization of International Air Transport, adopted at the World Air Transport Conference in 2013, finds practical implementation in regional international legal agreements concluded by EU member states, South and South America, East Asia, etc. Equally important areas of air traffic liberalization are bilateral air communications agreements concluded by countries and based on the provisions of the current ICAO Agreement about air communications.
It has been proved that Ukraine, as a member of ICAO since 1992, has been actively involved in universal, regional and bilateral cooperation in the aviation sector. The analysis of cooperation between Ukraine and ICAO shows, unfortunately, the episodic nature of such cooperation. The main regional area of cooperation between Ukraine and the EU has also been stagnant for many years, as evidenced by the clear delay in the signing of Ukraine and the EU Common Aviation Area Agreement, the text of which was initialed in 2013.
