In a keynote address to the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation 14th Annual Aviation Summit in Washington DC, American Airlines CEO Doug Parker said again that the evidence that carriers in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates were receiving subsidies was “overwhelming” and “unprecedented.”
Parker’s speech stated that there was now “overwhelming evidence that the governments of Qatar and the UAE are violating the aviation trade agreements between the US and those countries by providing enormous subsidies to Qatar Airways, Emirates Airline and Etihad Airways—subsidies in amounts that are unprecedented in the history of international trade”.
“To be clear, we aren’t challenging the motivations of these airlines,” he added. “But what we are saying is that the policies of these two governments are inconsistent with the foundation of the Open Skies trade agreements, and that these actions distort the competitive marketplace in a way that is wholly inconsistent with the trade and transportation polices of the United States.
“And these are no small subsidies. We have provided to the US government clear and strong evidence that Qatar and the UAE have provided these three airlines at least $42 billion in subsidies over the past decade. We believe this is the largest subsidy case ever presented to the US government.”
Parker described the Gulf airlines as “arms of the state” rather than independent companies with state investment.
Echoing Parker’s statement in a speech at the same event, Carsten Spohr, Lufthansa Group CEO, said that the Open Skies agreements are based on fairness and the Gulf carriers need to be brought back into fair competition framework.