Open Skies

[Ace_777]

Hey,
     Theres all this talk about open skies and stuff.

In layman's terms, what is it ?, and why are some people against and for it?

and also what are YOUR views on it?

[Craig.]

What is it?
It basically means any european airline can fly from any european airport that can handle a flight, to north america.
Where in the past a carrier was limited to its own country and incoming US flights were limited to pre designated airports in the UK. IE: Northwest were only able to fly to Gatwick. The idea being it would justify keeping Gatwick open for long haul flights and also it would leave Heathrow as a monopoly for a few of the richer airlines.
Now all those airlines have to compete for places at Heathrow and Gatwick, which means Virgin and BA stand to lose slots at LHR. This is why they are unhappy.
On the plus side it should now mean cheaper flights in some strange way, it also means airlines can fly to any US airport from any airport in Europe. My hopes are for some more direct flights to Memphis for instance as currently its only serviced by NW/KLM from Ams.

[eno]

The downside ........ US carriers can land at LHR pick up U.K. passengers and then carry on to another European destination. However a European carrier can not land in Boston and pick up US passengers then fly on to LAX. So it's open skies as long as it favours U.S. carriers.
In simple terms .... you could get a Northwest airlines flight from Heathrow to Rome... but not a BA flight from Boston to LA, unless you it was a stopover.

[pepper_airborne]

That is still not really fair. Why didnt they just even it all up?

[Ace_777]

Yeah, how come a British carrier cant do that ?  :-?

[Hagar]

Hi Ace. Haven't seen you around for a while.

This is the first I've heard of all this. I found this report on the BBC news site which gives the basic details. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6477969.stm
What struck me is that this statement is in direct conflict with the anti-pollution tax they were going on about only a few days ago. [quote]The EU said consumers would see a total of up to $16bn (