Delta

Following our previous post wondering how Trump's general protectionist and Putting America First policies would pan out in the airline traffic rights arena, legacy Delta has been quick to cross his doorstep, claiming that a level playing field, whatever that might be, would protect and add up to 25,000 American jobs. Where that figure comes from is unclear, and even if it were remotely accurate, how about the jobs of all those Americans in the aerospace industry building billions of dollars worth of aircraft for all those nasty foreign airlines? Or the people who work for foreign airlines in the USA?

The idea of forcing long haul American and foreign travellers to enter and exit the USA only at those points and on those routes the US carriers choose to serve is of course possible but in reality ludicrous. The ironic loser would be especially the new generation of highly efficient, smaller widebodies. Think Boeing 787 which even Emirates , hitherto wedded to almost exclusively the biggest aircraft it could get its hands on now appears to be considering. Then there are Trans- Atlantic capable 737s , and , if built a 757 successor.

Hopefully Mr Trump will suggest to Delta and friends that they just go out there and compete with all comers like never before ( and no, Pan Am never did at least ever since the jet age began) with their ground and onboard service and route networks. Depriving a host of US cities of their international gateways and choice of routes to the world would be a real backward step into the dark ages. It would also put the consumer last rather than first.