President Donald Trump told airline executives Thursday that
he would roll back "burdensome" aviation industry regulations and
slash the industry's taxes.
"We're going to be announcing something ... over the next two or three weeks that will be phenomenal in terms of tax and
developing our aviation infrastructure," Trump said at the kick-off to a
White House breakfast meeting with heads of most of the major U.S. commercial
and cargo airlines.
Citing advice he has received from his personal pilot, Trump
also told the executives that he wants to modernize U.S. aviation systems and
equipment.
"We have an obsolete plane system, we have obsolete
airports," the president said.
Over the coming year, Congress is expected to take a second
look at a proposal to move the air traffic control (ATC) oversight from the
auspices of the FAA to a private, nonprofit entity that would be overseen by a
board of stakeholders.
Other pressing issues in the aviation sector include
upgrades to the ATC system itself, security, airport infrastructure and a
debate over whether to increase the maximum passenger facility charge (PFC)
that airports are allowed to assess per flight segment.
Thursday's meeting also came as Delta, American and United
have reignited their call for the federal government to clamp down on service
to the U.S. from Gulf carriers Emirates, Etihad and Qatar, which they accuse of
accepting illegal government subsidies in violation of open skies agreements.
However, cargo carriers as well as JetBlue and Hawaiian
strongly oppose a clamp-down on the Gulf airlines.
Trump offered at least tepid, though unspecific, support for
foreign air carriers as he kicked off the meeting Thursday. "I know you're
under pressure from a lot of foreign elements and foreign carriers. I've been
hearing that a little bit," he told the executives. "At the same time
we want to make life good for them also. They come with big investments. In
many cases, those investments are made by their governments, but they are still
big investments."