Skift Take
Ensuring adequate competition in airports large and small gives those airports more negotiating power against the big three national carriers, and could ensure adequate infrastructure for more visitors from abroad to spend their travel dollars in the US. This last is, after all, the mandate of organizations like the US Travel Association.
As airlines in the United States push for a review of established Open Skies treaties, a conflict has developed between the interests of select aviation industry groups and those of U.S. travel and tourism organizations.
The U.S.’s three major carriers, American Airlines, Delta Airlines, and United Airlines, which, after mass industry consolidation in recent years, control the bulk of the nation’s domestic and international traffic, have recently appealed to the White House asking for limits on Gulf carriers and protested the Open Skies bid from Norwegian Air International (NAI). They have already delayed approval of the airline’s application for service out of its Dublin base.
Roger Dow, President and CEO of the US Travel Association has characterized requests to review the policy of Open Skies as both alarming and disappointing, pointing out that it “has both made it easier and cheaper for American citizens to travel abroad and helped expand the lucrative inbound international travel market to the U.S.,” adding that “to abrogate Open Skies would fly in the face of competition and consumer choice, and ultimately harm demand for travel to the U.S.”
Kevin Mitchell, the chairman of the Business Travel Coalition wrote a letter to government officials stating: “Now that U.S. airlines have secured antitrust immunity, industry consolidation and concomitantly rising airfares and ancillary fees, and are achieving record unprecedented profits, so
