Qatar warns of retaliation over landing slots access
Dispute is for policy-makers, Air Canada says
MIAMI • Despite attempts to tiptoe around the thorny issue, the growing animosity between western and Middle Eastern carriers quickly dominated the conversation at an international airline conference Monday after the outspoken CEO of Qatar Airways threatened retaliation against western “protectionism.”
The simmering dispute is about whether the Gulf carriers — including Qatar Airways, Emirates and Etihad Airways — should be given more access to landing slots at airports in North America and Europe. Several major U.S. and European airlines have banded together to argue that their Middle Eastern competitors have an unfair advantage because of the government subsidies they receive, and are pushing the U.S. government to review its open-skies agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
Meanwhile, the Gulf carriers deny that they are subsidized and say it’s actually their western rivals that receive sizable handouts.
The issue isn’t on the agenda at the annual meeting of the International Air Transport Association (IATA) in Miami this week, but it was virtually inevitable that it would come up at an event that brings nearly 150 airlines together in one room.
Qatar Airways CEO Akbar Al Baker didn’t waste any time in raising his concerns, jumping in during the opening session of the conference to complain about “protectionism coming from certain circles in the U.S. and Europe.”
“Any rollback of liberal market access and open-skies policies will reverberate across the whole world and will lead to retaliatory protectionism that will affect all aspects of trade,” Al Baker said to murmurs from the audience, adding that IATA should take a stand in the dispute.
In a roundtable with the media later in the day, IATA director general Tony Tyler said he supports “fair and free competition” but added that market access is an issue for governments to address, not industry.
“We are very much in favour of liberalizing, and the whole issue of opening up skies is good for the industry, it’s good for everybody, but within that description there’s room for sensible people to disagree about what fair competition means,” Tyler said.
Air Canada CEO Calin Rovinescu, who has largely stayed out of the debate, agreed with Tyler that the solution has to rest in the hands of policy-makers.
“We can talk as much as we’d like about liberalization and airlines wanting to have greater access, and I think that’s overall a very good thing, but fundamentally airtraffic agreements are trade agreements like so many other parts of the industrial landscape,” said Rovinescu, who has been chairman of IATA’s board of governors for the past year.
Rovinescu told the Financial Post that the debate about allowing access to Gulf carriers has “already occurred in Canada” and he doesn’t expect it to heat up again.
Emirates and Etihad, currently fly to Toronto while Qatar flies to Montreal.
American Airlines CEO Doug Parker, who is one of the executives leading the charge against the Gulf carriers, tried to downplay the disagreement Monday, saying he had a “nice talk” with Al Baker over the weekend.
“This is about being able to compete against airlines instead of governments,” Parker said.
“Our dispute is not with any of those three airlines; we’re just trying to get the U.S. government to enforce fair policies.”