Open Skies Q
 

I know what open skies would allow the airlines as far as flight practices. What would it allow for hiring practices? Would an American based airline be able to hire more foreign pilots? Would ratings become more universal? ex. No need to get a JAA to fly in Europe.

Would an American airline be able to register their planes or operation in other countries to avoid certain legalities?

Example: Carnival Cruise Lines ships are all registered in Panama so they can have wooden decks and follow other practices that would be forbidden if they based them in the US.

Would there be some kind of union pact between the EU airlines and US airlines to try and keep things standard so we don't have them operating MESA style here and we'd have no way to legally change it?

ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization), does a pretty good job keeping things standard across international boarders. The FAA maintains a list of 3rd world airlines that are not allowed to fly in the US because of safety concerns. Most developed countries have standards as good or better than US so registering A/C overseas won't really help anything. A lot of US airlines ship heavy maintenance offshore because of cheaper labor, that's a concern.

On the other hand, and quite unfortunately, I think foreign carriers are interested in open skies/larger ownership in domestic carriers because we represent the low cost/cheap labor in the civilized world. Which is good for our jobs:(, bad for our bank accounts.