Alaska Airlines favours the US open-skies policy, adding another voice to the Gulf carrier access debate.
“Alaska Airlines has benefited from open skies in the form of new access for both US and foreign carriers to serve numerous international markets,” writes Brad Tilden, chief executive of the Seattle-based carrier, in a letter to secretary of state John Kerry and secretary of transportation Anthony Foxx dated 27 February but released publicly on 10 July.
Emirates Airline would likely not have been able to launch service to Seattle Tacoma, where it connects with Alaska under the carriers’ codeshare partnership, without open skies, he adds.
Alaska is in a precarious position also having deep codeshare partnerships with American Airlines and Delta Air Lines, which are leading the push to limit the access of Gulf carriers to the USA.
The mainline carriers, as well as United Airlines, allege that Emirates, Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways, have received more than $42 billion in state subsidies that has allowed them to essentially dump capacity in the US market under the existing open-skies agreements. They want the US government to seek consultations with the Qatari and Emirati governments and cap Gulf capacity at January levels.
The US has sought public comments on the issue and plans to close the docket to new information on 3 August. Comments can be filed on this information until 24 August.
Alaska does not have codeshares with either Etihad or Qatar but does have relationships with other foreign carriers that benefit from open skies, including Air France, British Airways, Korean Air and LAN Airlines, writes Tilden.
“Open skies enables carriers such as Emirates to have access to the US, which in turn fuels Alaska Airlines growth so we can effectively compete as a 4% market share carrier in a consolidated US industry,” he says.
Tilden notes that Alaska carries 70% of international connecting traffic over Seattle Tacoma International airport.
The airline also competes with Delta, which began building up an Asia-Pacific gateway hub at the airport two years ago.
Alaska joins FedEx and JetBlue Airways in supporting open skies and opposing the US mainline carriers' push to limit Gulf access.
Source: Cirium Dashboard
