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In the opening weeks of the Trump presidency, major U.S. airlines and their unions have pressed their cases against the Gulf airlines, against the low-cost transatlantic carrier Norwegian and even against Mexican discount carriers competing for landing rights in Mexico City.
But despite Trump’s leanings toward protectionism, his administration has given early indications that those seeking a clampdown on foreign air carriers won’t always get what they want.
The president himself offered at least tepid, though unspecific support for foreign air carriers as he kicked off a Feb. 9 breakfast meeting with executives of several U.S. commercial and cargo airlines.
“I know you’re under pressure from a lot of foreign elements and foreign carriers,” he told the executives. “I’ve been hearing that a little bit. At the same time, we want to make life good for them also. They come with big investments. In many cases, those investments are made by their governments, but they are still big investments.”
While those remarks left plenty of room for interpretation, they came just two days after White House press secretary Sean Spicer dealt a blow to legacy carriers Delta, United and American as well as their allies at major industry labor unions by expressing support for Norwegian Air International (NAI), the Irish subsidiary of Norwegian Air Group that was awarded a foreign air-carrier permit in the closing weeks of the Obama administration.
“There is a huge economic interest that America has in that deal right now,” Spicer said of Norwegian during his Feb. 7 daily press briefing. He referenced Norwegian’s plan to purchase more than 100 Boeing aircraft, as well as the carrier’s commitment to staff its U.S.-Europe routes with 50% U.S. workers.
Unions and the legacy carriers argue that Norwegian’s decision to operate out of Ireland is intended to skirt Norway’s tougher labor laws. With Trump’s entry into office, Norwegian’s opponents have redoubled their fight, filing an appeal of the NAI approval and making a separate political push for Trump to revoke the permit.
That effort isn’t the only attempt that major U.S. airlines are making to appeal to Trump’s “America First” agenda.
Legacy carriers and their union allies have also stepped up efforts to persuade the U.S. government to clamp down on the Gulf carriers Emirates, Etihad and Qatar, which they accuse of accepting more than $50 billion in state subsidies since 2004, in violation of international open skies aviation treaties. The Gulf carriers deny that charge.
The CEOs of the Big Three have requested a meeting with secretary of state Rex Tillerson to discuss the open skies dispute.
In an interview last week, Jill Zuckman, chief spokeswoman for the Partnership for Fair & Open Skies, which comprises the Big Three as well as seven airline unions, said the group senses an opportunity now that Trump is in office.
“Now we have a president who has really made his platform about enforcing trade agreements and standing up for American workers,” she said.
But as with the Norwegian battle, there are signals that the Trump team won’t prove to be receptive. At his confirmation hearing on Jan. 18, commerce secretary-designee Wilbur Ross declared himself “a big proponent” of open skies.
That assertion might not bother the legacy airlines too much, since they make it clear that they support 118 of the 120 U.S. open skies agreements. But air carriers that oppose the push for sanctions against the Gulf airlines, including JetBlue and FedEx, argue that such sanctions would themselves be an open skies violation.
Southwest, which has steered clear of both the Norwegian and open skies disputes, has also appealed to nationalism in the opening weeks of Trump’s presidency. Southwest is competing with JetBlue and Alaska as well as with the Mexican carriers Volaris, Viva Aerobus and Interjet for landing rights that Delta and Aeromexico are being forced to give up at Mexico City’s Benito Juarez Airport as part of an antitrust-immunity deal between those two airlines in December
In a Jan. 31 filing, Southwest urged the DOT to fulfill all of the U.S. carriers’ landing rights requests before doling out any to the Mexican airlines.
Sourse: travelweekly.com
