Clarifies Walsh's comment in paragraph 10
Global airline executives remain concerned over potential implications of the subsidies battle between US legacy carriers and Gulf airlines, even though the issue appears to have largely fallen off the industry's radar.
IAG chief executive Willie Walsh says the controversy, which emerged in early 2015, has “changed the global debate around liberalisation, which is disappointing”.
Walsh was speaking at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Aviation Symposium, which kicked off with a panel discussing the subsidies spat.
“I’m a lot more pessimistic today,” says Walsh. “The impact of the debate is having a negative effect.”
IAG’s shareholder Qatar Airways is one of the three Gulf carriers mired in the controversy. US majors Delta Air Lines, American Airlines and United Airlines accuse Qatar, Emirates Airline and Etihad Airways of receiving more than $42 billion in subsidies from their governments. The three Gulf carriers strongly deny this.
The US government has promised to review the claims, but has so far not taken any action.
While public debate over the issue appears to have calmed from the latter half of 2015, airline executives are concerned that damage has been done.
“It feels like a far more benign debate than it was years ago,” says Andrew Parker, Qantas group executive for government, industry and international affairs. “Issues like this do have implications globally… it doesn’t feel like it’s going away as a global topic anytime soon.”
One of the most vocal critics of the Gulf carriers, the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), reiterates that the US government needs to reconsider some of its open-skies agreements. ALPA’s senior attorney David Semanchick characterises the US government’s slate of open-skies deals as a field that needs some “weeding and pruning”.
In response, Walsh says with a reference to the lawns at the venue where the symposium was being held: “Using the gardening analogy, the lawns here are perfect... If the US has lawns like this, we can do anything."
Air China’s vice-president and general manager for North America Zhihang Chi remains concerned that the controversy is a sign of a new wave of US protectionism that could impact other bilateral air services agreements.
Chi has long called for the US and Chinese governments to negotiate for more frequencies under the countries’ bilateral agreement, as carriers from both sides desire to grow services. A round of May 2015 talks between US and Chinese officials did not yield any success, with Chi saying that the US government was not keen to add more frequencies.
It is understood that US officials had raised concerns over the availability of ideally-timed landing slots for US carriers at Chinese airports during the May talks.
Chi says US reluctance to add more frequencies is “unfathomable”. “Just about 10 years ago, the US was knocking on the door of China, asking for more frequencies, for more market access.”
Source: Cirium Dashboard
