British Airways (BA) has expressed its frustration at the speed of progress in the liberalising of European-US aviation.
Speaking at the Routes Leaders Forum in Stockholm this morning (24 September), BA CEO Willie Walsh, said that far more needed to be done if the Open Skies deal was to move beyond its first stage after 2010.
”I am disappointed that some people see this Open Skies as the deal,” he said. ”The deal we should aspire to is the one that removes ownership and control restrictions that prevent us from genuinely competing with one another."
”It”s a pity that it has taken so long for two parties that want to have an agreement with each other about competition. There is a lot to do to have a genuinely free market”
Walsh also noted that BA had made its determination clear to take advantage of the new Open Skies deal in the teeth of fierce opposition in the US, while at the same time he urged EU administrators to keep the heat on their American counterparts.
”There was outrage in the US that BA should seek to take advantage of the Open Skies agreement, but we intend to take advantage of it ” we will push as far as we can."
”We need to hold the regulators to their promises to have an Open Aviation Area by 2010. If we don”t keep them under pressure we will never move beyond where we are today.”
But former Olympic Airways boss and visiting Professor at Cranfield University, Rigas Doganis, slammed BA's and other carriers” response to the agreement, noting his ”astonishment” during the Forum that BA was not embracing the deal with open arms.
”I find it astonishing that Willie Walsh is not more enthusiastic,” he said, adding: ”But this is not just a feature of BA ” it is one of many legacy carriers ” many of them are dinosaurs."
”It has taken low-cost airlines to be innovative ” what we see with the liberalisation of the North Atlantic is that the legacy carriers are moving like dinosaurs. What do we have? We have complaints about not having a Stage II (Open Skies) and (although) I see the existing agreement is not perfect, it is something to be optimistic about.”
Where Walsh and Doganis did share common ground however, was the acceptance that any progress would be temporarily stalled by upcoming US presidential elections next year and a change of the European Commission in 2009.
Opposition was also likely from US unions, anxious not to see any potential European ownership impact on their ability to crew American aircraft with locally-sourced employment.
Walsh also raised the intriguing but ”real” possibility that the UK government could ”withdraw some of the traffic rights gained under the first stage agreement,” should progress stall on further liberalization.
”The British government has shown it can take tough decisions and I believe if there is no progress or if there is further opposition in the US, the UK may well be inclined to act,” he said.