DOT Due To Make Decision Soon, Possibly By End Of Month
New, highly lucrative, and rare air routes to China --
established by trade talks between that country and the US -- are
being opened... and competition between the contenders is getting
ugly.
Delta Air Lines filed thousands of pages of documents with the
US Department of Transportation to bolster its bid to begin a route
from its Atlanta hub to Shanghai. The airline also took the
opportunity to tear down rival bids, according to the Atlanta
Business Chronicle.
But the other contenders -- Continental Airlines, United
Airlines, Northwest Airlines and American Airlines -- responded in
kind. American contends the Atlanta/Beijing route is a "high-risk
experimental gateway."
The DOT is due to render a decision very soon, possibly by the
end of the month, according to a spokesperson.
"The mudslinging is indicative of how competitive the domestic
airline industry has become and how valuable international service
-- relative to domestic service -- is, especially in a market where
there is restricted output," said Darin Lee, who has assisted
airlines in bidding for China routes in the past as an aviation
economist with Cambridge, MA-based LECG.
"If China was completely open, this would be different."
The one-upmanship attempts don't usually make any difference in
the decision making processes, said Dan Kasper, managing director
of LECG, and a former chief of the Civil Aeronautics Board's
international division, which used to regulate the airline
industry, including the China routes.
He said the DOT's bureaucrats will make the decision based on
the agency's criteria of serving underserved areas and increasing
competition between the airlines.
"The department realizes that these are high-stakes proceedings
for all of the carriers," he said.
Delta wants the routes so bad it has even turned on its SkyTeam
Alliance airline partner, Northwest, saying it is "one of two
entrenched" carriers that "squanders" its rights to fly to China
"to feed its Tokyo hub instead."
"This is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black,"
responds Northwest. "Northwest's Narita hub is a US carrier hub,
just like Atlanta, and there is no principled basis for disparaging
the benefits Northwest provides to the US traveling public merely
because Northwest's passengers happen to change planes in Japan
instead of Georgia."
Northwest is trying to get a new nonstop route between Detroit
and Shanghai.
There is a benefit in all this. The negative banter certainly
"makes for entertaining reading at the DOT," said Kasper.