Qatar Airways chief executive Akbar Al Baker has threatened to leave the Oneworld alliance, accusing American Airlines of blocking his carrier’s business.
“If a major airline that invited us… to join the Oneworld, is today restricting us from operating into that country… then I don’t need to be part of this alliance,” he said in early June.
Doug Parker, the chief executive of American Airlines, said they did not have a dispute with other airlines and that it was for the authorities in Washington to act on this issue. “We have a view that our US government should enforce its trade policies,” he said.
“We didn’t come begging them [American Airlines] to be in the alliance. we were invited by them,” said Al-Baker at the International Air Transport Association’s (IATA) annual meeting in Miami.
“If they don’t honour the commitment of an alliance then we don’t want to be in this alliance. And there are many other American carriers that would like to do business with us so actually they are destroying the spirit of alliance,” he said. The threat came hours after Al Baker complained about protectionism from certain parts of the US and Europe. The three big US carriers – American, Delta and United – are pushing their government to restrict market access for the Gulf carriers. In Europe Lufthansa, Air France-KLM and IAG among others have also been vocal on the issue.
They argue that their rivals in the Middle East have received $43 billion in unfair state aid, a charge that Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways deny while accusing US carriers of enjoying post- 911 state aid amounting to $71.5 billion. As a state-owned airline, al Baker has argued that the Qatari government has every right to inject capital into the business. “We don’t receive handouts or subsidies from the state,” he told the National newspaper in May. “The state is the owner of the airline but it’s within the right of any owner to inject equity.
We are independent. We are operating a very successful model of an airline that is owned by the state as a commercial company.”
