The heads of Delta, American and United have asked for a
meeting with newly confirmed secretary of state Rex Tillerson to discuss their
Open Skies dispute with Gulf airlines Emirates, Etihad and Qatar.
In a letter Wednesday, American's Doug Parker, Delta's Ed
Bastian and United's Oscar Munoz restated their allegation that the Gulf
carriers have accepted more than $50 billion in illegal state subsidies from
their home countries Qatar and United Arab Emirates since 2004.
"The subsidies allow the Gulf carriers to operate
without concern for turning a profit, unlike U.S. airlines, and therefore focus
entirely on stripping market share and driving out competition," the
executives wrote. "The subsidy-enabled capacity dumping by the Gulf
carriers has nearly eliminated U.S. carrier service to the Middle East and
India."
The Gulf carriers deny that they have received such
subsidies. And while the Big 3 U.S. airlines have long asked for a block on
route expansion into the U.S. for the Gulf carriers, that position is far from
unanimous among U.S. airlines. JetBlue, Hawaiian and the cargo carriers FedEx
and Atlas Air Worldwide have joined together in opposition to the Big 3.
Meanwhile, the Partnership for Fair & Open Skies, which
is comprised of the Big 3 as well as seven airline unions, looked askance at a
Bloomberg report that Etihad CEO James Hogan had said the Abu Dhabi-based
carrier won't add more routes to the U.S.
"Hogan appears to think that the United States should
be willing to accept the status quo and just move on. He's wrong," the
partnership's chief spokeswoman, Jill Zuckman, said in prepared remarks. "The
United States should not tolerate this rule-breaking, bad behavior by the UAE
and Qatar that hurts U.S. airlines and costs American jobs."