US’ rejection of additional China flights reflects aviation scuffle that’s likely to last: expert

Source:Global Times Published: 2020/6/21 12:58:17

Flight MF8095 of the Xiamen Airlines is welcomed at the Tianhe Airport in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province, April 8, 2020. Flight MF8095 from Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, was the first flight arriving in Wuhan after it lifted outbound travel restrictions on Wednesday. (Xinhua/Cheng Min)





The US rejection of Chinese airlines' requests to add weekly flights on the grounds of maintaining "parity" is unreasonable, as the US is forcing China to decrease US-bound flights to cater to US airlines' business decisions, experts said. 

The US has rejected a request by Chinese airlines for additional weekly flights between the two countries, stating that they made the decision to maintain parity in scheduled passenger services between China and the US, according to a Reuters report. 

The US Department of Transportation nevertheless clarified that its decision was not meant to escalate tensions over travel restrictions and that it is willing to review the decision if China adjusts policies toward US carriers. 

The US requests for "parity" have provoked criticism from Chinese experts. Chinese news portal guancha.cn cited a civil aviation commentator as saying that the US is deliberately creating the illusion that China is bullying the US in order to divert focus away from the US' increasingly intensifying internal chaos. 

Lin Zhijie, a veteran aviation market watcher told the Global Times that actually China has granted flights to every US airline, but only two US airline companies have applied . Under the current situation, the US has asked to slash US-bound flights from China accordingly.  

"In a word, the US airlines themselves chose not to fly and the US didn't allow Chinese airlines to fly either," Lin said. 

According to Lin, air rights negotiations normally focus on flight capacity instead of flight numbers, but the US seemed to be obsessed with the latter. 

There have been ups and downs in China-US airline relations recently amid simmering tensions between the world's two largest economies. The Trump administration threatened in early June to block all Chinese airlines from flying to the US. The two countries later agreed to each allow four weekly flights. 

According to Lin, the China-US airline brawl will be a relatively long process, although consensus had been reached for a short time previously. 

"The US wants China to drop any air travel restrictions so that their airlines can make money, but China wants to guard against imported cases. It will gradually open up the aviation market under this premise," he said. 





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