Last week, the Allied Pilots Association, the group that represents American Airlines pilots, sent out a press release supporting Rep. Oberstar’s quest against airline alliances and anti-trust immunity. Such an opinion from a pilot’s union isn’t unexpected at all, but I have to take exception with this:
“It is gratifying to have a lawmaker of Rep. Oberstar’s influence weighing in on these issues, given their critical importance to our national security, as well as to hundreds of thousands of airline workers and the traveling public,” [APA President Captain Lloyd] Hill said. (Emphasis mine.)
Really? How is anti-trust immunity a threat to national security? I completely understand the union’s position, but playing the “national security” card just seems irresponsible to me.
The “national security” issue is the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, which is one of the principal arguments against allowing any kind of increased cross-border integration or foreign ownership of airlines. Basically, airlines with U.S. registration have part of their fleet that can be called up for military or civil defense use in emergencies and thus must be maintained at readiness. Defense officials are concerned that the CRAF program would be undermined if foreign airlines were allowed to compete on domestic routes but without being obliged to make their fleets available for CRAF.
I think there are ways of finessing the CRAF issue and providing alternatives if we did wish to move forward with cross-border integration. The real issue here is that these alliances and antitrust immunity grants are substitutes for and not necessarily vanguards of foreign ownership, and thus the red herring here is not “national security” but the APA’s conflation of ATI with foreign ownership.
Evan, as always, you provide great insights. Thanks for stopping by! I completely agree with what you’re saying about how the union is treating this. If AA was looking for BA to invest in the airline and take a significant percentage of AMR’s stock, I think the CRAF argument is valid. Otherwise, this is just APA trying to use “national security” to its advantage.