Reuters reports that BA Chairman Martin Broughton said today that the new Open Skies agreement risked ceding benefits to U.S. Airlines in return for only “miniscule concessions” from Washington.
We can’t disagree with them, although we hope Open Skies comes to be. European carriers would not be allowed to fly domestically in the U.S., which they would like to do…although they would be able to fly from any city in the EU to any city in US, subject to government approval, without serious restriction, and would be allowed the right to fly flights onward from the U.S. to an other international destination.
We never quite understood why Open Skies is tied up with foreign control of U.S. airlines, but we are glad they are willing to give on that, since Congress obviously won’t.