It is hard not to view the recently signed US-Germany open skies agreement as an example of high German engineering. Like all good designs, it is the details that reveal the craftsmanship. In this case, where most see an agreement between two countries, German air transport officials have designed a blueprint for a liberalised North Atlantic commercial aviation market governed by the US and the European Union.
It is in the last pages of the Germany-US accord that one finds 'Otam', the latest acronym to afflict the airline world, standing for the 'Open Transatlantic Aviation Market.' Here a future is envisaged where there is no restraint of aviation trade: capacity is unlimited, fares are unrestricted, market share is uncapped and the EU negotiates for all its members.
Whether they are entranced with the concept - or merely addicted to abbreviations (such as FAA, MOU, MOC, ATC, GPS, G9, PDQ or ASAP) - officials at the US Department of Transportation (DOT) are already using Otam to refer to what used to be called 'multilateralism.' (Patrick Murphy, deputy assistant secretary for international policy, says that, recently, he suddenly realised people in his office kept referring to 'Otam' in such a run of the mill manner that he was almost embarrassed to ask what was being talked about. When he was told, he exaggerated a bureaucrat's knowledge of the codes: 'Oh, that Otam.')
Otam may be viewed one of two ways. There is nothing wrong with considering it to be highly significant, in that anything in an official agreement of such importance as the US-Germany open skies accord does set precedents.
Though one German official does not like the term 'placate,' this is essentially what Germany did with Otam (and other elements of the open skies agreement). Because the EU requires that no bilateral be made with a third country if it impacts trade between member states, Germany was not free to negotiate such things as anti-trust immunity for Lufthansa with United in the context of liberalisation with the US.
On the other hand, there was no alternative but to negotiate bilaterally with the US. According to a German official, the idea was to make an agreement on a bilateral basis and have that agreement include elements which the EU could then work with. Otam was a way to tell the Commission that 'one did what one could to make it absolutely clear that there would have to be some kind of EU-US arrangement.'
'There wasn't any other alternative for the German government,' says a Lufthansa official, who adds that Otam simply gives a name to the slow but moving process of EU states handing over international aviation negotiating competency to the Commission. 'It's not necessarily spitting into the wind, but spitting with the wind.'
Mead Jennings
Source: Airline Business
