Open Skies..your thoughts??
 

This open skies thing is a monster - it will change how the airlines in the US and Western Europe do business. What, as pilots do you folks think about some of the aspects of this, i.e. cabotage, possible foreign ownership, QOL, the magical "golden share", etc. etc. etc.?

Open skies as I understand it is not cabotage or foriegn ownership.

I think what would happen is ANY us carrier could fly to ANY european destination and back (as long as they can get gates, probably from an alliance partner) and vice versa. There would be no more artificial government quotas limiting arrival slots into certain cities.

This would not allow cabotage, which is a foriegn carrier arriving at a US city, embarking US pax, and then carrying those US pax to ANOTHER US city...essentially allowing foriegn carriers to serve the us domestic market. If this happens, all airlines would be based in some african country, repo to a us city, then start a 4 day trip (all for $1,300/year).

Most people think open skies would favor european airlines, allowing low-cost euro start-ups to undercut the lucrative international market between the us and europe.

Kind of what I was thinking too. The EU is all for it, I hear. The US Government may be a different story, though.

I believe the US government recently came to an agreement with europe on open skies.

The history involved fair-trade issues revolving around the subsidies provided by european governments to Airbus.

The US charged that gave airbus an unfair advantage over Boeing (true), and I think the world court sided with the US.

As part of the settlement negotiations, the europeans demanded open skies, which was a sticking point for several years but was recently resolved.

Even with all the subsidies, they cant make an innovative NEW airplane worth a damn....

Apparently not.