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Bombshell Report Turns Open Skies Debate On Its
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April 8, 2015 - U.S. Travel Association
Executive Vice President for Public Affairs
Jonathan Grella issued the following statement
on a Congressional
Research Service report, unearthed by the
Business Travel Coalition via WikiLeaks, finding
that
U.S.
airlines received $155 billion in federal
subsidies between 1918 and 1998:
“The Big Three U.S. airlines have constructed
themselves an enormous glass house, and their
amnesia about their own subsidies has now cost
them the credibility of their own core argument
for breaking Open Skies agreements. I give all
credit to our friends at the Business Travel
Coalition for discovering this pivotal bit of
evidence that completely alters the landscape of
this debate.
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“This exposes the fiction that the
U.S.
airline cartel’s furious and expensive assault
on Open Skies is about subsidies. We hope this
prompts policymakers and the public to ask: OK,
what’s really motivating the campaign to break
these agreements? We hope there is something
else to dissuade us from by far the most likely
conclusion: the Big Three airlines hate
competition, and rather than cope with it in the
marketplace they will undertake extreme means to
stamp it out politically.
“We have long known that the subsidy argument
for breaking Open Skies agreements was thin if
not downright foolhardy, and now we have strong
evidence of that from an unbiased source, the
Congressional Research Service. This
development, coupled with the inarguable harm
rolling back Open Skies would inflict upon
American travelers, economic productivity and
job creation, should end any discussion over
selectively abrogating the agreements. But the
Big Three airlines have shown a lot of
determination and resources, so we’re resigned
to the fact they’ll keep this up, and we’re
curious to see what their next whopper is going
to be.” |
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