DOT Officially Pulls Plug on Foreign Investment Change
Today the DOT officially announced it was withdrawing its proposal to change the rules regulating foreign investment in U.S. airlines.
The Secretary of the DOT, Mary Peters, said in a statement that the Department remains "committed to an Open Skies aviation agreement with the European Union."
Only problem, of course, is that the EU has more or less linked the passage of a new Open Skies agreement to the loosening of the foreign investment regulations in the U.S.
That's okay. As I have written more than once this year in PBB, I was not a fan of the proposed rule change for two reasons. One, I was not sure that Congress should not be the body to authorize such a change and two, I was very skeptical of the wording of the proposed change -- especially as it pertained to the issue of foreign entities and their ability to "control" certain aspects of a carrier's marketing and other operational decisions. I felt the proposed rule was simply too vague in a number of areas, making it almost unenforceable.
Finally -- there's also the question of just why it is we need to open up airlines to "much-needed" foreign investment in the first place. It's pretty clear there is a lot of money chasing airline deals in the U.S. right now. Maybe too much money.
However, we do need a new Open Skies policy between the EU and the U.S.
So let's start over and do it right this time.