American carriers are calling on negotiators to ensure that the imminent Open Skies agreement runs beyond its initial phase to 2010.
Open Skies will see US and European airlines fly to and from points in their respective continents without restriction from next month, but carriers are pressing for the deal to be made permanent.
Despite the deal being applicable to the whole of Europe however, it is essentially London Heathrow that has been the prize capture in the game for those carriers outside the lucky four ” Virgin, British Airways, American and United ” who have been refused permission to use it.
”It would pain us terribly if this ruptured in two years time,” said Continental Airlines senior director UK & Ireland, Bob Schumacher. ”Open Skies came out of the blue and we openly applaud it ” finally the obstacles to fair competition out of London Heathrow have been removed.
”We have ploughed our own furrow in the UK, but at last we have the opportunity to serve Heathrow ” around 5.6m customers across the Atlantic use Heathrow ” Frankfurt has 3.2m.”
And Schumacher assuaged fears that the current stampede of American carriers to Heathrow would lead to vast over-capacity. As he pointed out, with the heavily slot-constrained airport now bursting at the seams with a 98.5% occupancy, supply is extremely tight anyway, leading to a hugely expensive trade in slots.
Continental”s desire to enter Heathrow is even more understandable given that the carrier is the largest airline in New York, although the carrier was at pains to point out that it would still serve Gatwick.
And capacity? ”If there is any market share loss, it will be from the incumbents,” said Schumacher.