Of most significance is the rise of Democrat Jim Oberstar to chairman of the key Transportation Committee in Congress. Oberstar is a staunch ally of labour and thus an opponent of the Bush administration proposal to encourage foreign investment in airlines on which US-EU (European Union) Open Skies depends.
Days after the election returns made him the presumptive committee leader, Oberstar said he had asked the new transportation secretary Mary Peters to set aside the administration's proposal. "We need to go back and think it over," he says.
Delta Air Lines executive vice-president for sales and customer service Lee Macenczak says: "The statement that they need to take another look means more time. There is some re-education to be done".
The proposal was made in November 2005, but has been mired in opposition that Oberstar helped lead. Opposition also came from Texas and New Jersey Republicans who were enlisted by Continental Airlines to block the plan. Houston-based Continental has a major hub in Newark, New Jersey.
Oberstar insists Democrats are not opposed to Open Skies, although as recently as last summer he told the Air Line Pilots Association that the foreign investment clause threatened job and national security by weakening civil airlift (an obligation by US carriers to transport troops in times of national emergency). Oberstar also stresses that the tentative plan does nothing to open London Heathrow to new carriers.
An aviation expert respected by both Republicans and Democrats, Oberstar left the door open just a bit, saying of the foreign investment proposal: "I don't know why it became so important" to the EU, which had urged the USA to propose it. Oberstar suggests that traffic-rights liberalisation could be separated from investment liberalisation - a step that would put the next move in the European Commission court.
From Europe, though, the door certainly looked closed. British Airways chief executive Willie Walsh says he did not see "any prospects of any deal in the short- to medium-term" meaning the next 18 months. Walsh says he had seen "very little appetite on either side of the Atlantic" for major change.
Source: Airline Business
