If I understand the agreement correctly, the Open Skies plan will allow U.S. airlines to operate within Europe -- in other words, flying from one European city to another rather than simply to Europe from the US and back. The agreement is supposed to go into effect next March.

Has anyone heard of a US airline poised to take advantage of Open Skies? Any schedules readied for March?

I've poked around a little bit on Delta's and USAirways's websites and haven't seen a mention.

I don't think that's right.

The Open Skies agreement allow any US and Europe airline to operate <b>between</b> the two continent, not within one.

So, you still won't find US airlines flying within Europe (other than those with grandfathered rights, though nobody is using them), and you won't find European airlines picking up inside US for another US destination.

What has been announced that weren't possible before are BA flights between the US and continental Europe; and AF flights between US and LHR.

Also, airports with slot controls, like LHR, will continue to have them. Any airline wanting to serve LHR still have to buy the slots from someone else.

Oh. That's a lot less interesting than I'd thought.

Thanks so much for the clarification, though -- I should have known I could count on you, rkkwan.

Actually I believe the April agreement was asymmetrical regarding &quot;fifth freedom&quot; rights. My understanding is that it granted relatively open fifth freedom rights for carriers operating on intra-Europe international itineraries, while continuing to deny any cabotage rights for foreign carriers within the USA.

What that means is that a US-based airline can fly, say, JFK-LHR-FCO, with pax planing and deplaning in LHR for the short hops to/from Rome. However an Alitalia flight can't go FCO-JFK-ORD and carry paid domestic traffic between NYC and Chicago.

So yes, at some point you could fly on Delta to Paris, and then again on Delta to Istanbul, if they were of a mind to do so. You <i>wouldn't</i>, however, be able to fly between Paris and Marseille on DL, since that wouldn't be international and would constitute cabotage.

Yeah, I think Gardyloo is right. But it's pretty much a moot point at this time, as no US airline is interested in competing in the intra-Europe market.

Don't forget that Pan Am used to have a hub at FRA, which was sold to Delta. Delta soon closed down that hub.

Similarly TWA used to have a hub at CDG. Not sure who has the rights to those routes now.

Didn't the Pan Am hub at Frankfurt exist primarily to fly passengers between West Germany and West Berlin? It and British Airways had the only rights to those routes before reunification, if I remember.

And wasn't TWA's Paris hub used to fan out its own trans-Atlantic passengers to other European destinations? It could not justify a wide-body jet from JFK to, say, Istanbul, but it could siphon passengers off its Paris flights and take them to Istanbul and other destinations on smaller planes. But was it ever permitted to fly passengers only from CDG-IST?

TWA served Rome, Athens, Cairo and Tel Aviv from Paris (with stops en route at Rome and Athens on some flights.) They also served Dhahran from Athens and Cairo, since flying from TLV to Saudi Arabia was a no-no.

Pan Am served Berlin from several West German airports at various times. Its main European hubs were London and Frankfurt, with the latter used for PA's famous Flights 1 and 2, the counter-rotating daily RTWs they operated.

British, American and French airlines all had rights before 1990 to fly to Berlin from &quot;their&quot; zones of Germany. At one point, weren't only the occupying powers' airlines allowed to fly into Berlin at all?

But in a gesture of European solidarity, Air France set up a joint venture with Lufthansa to operate the French rights around 1980, called something like Eurolines, so most of us can't remember Air France operating German domestic flights in the same way we remember BA, TWA and PanAm, doing. I'm sure some of the flybynight British operators (like British Eagle) did intra- German flights too from time to time

Both PanAm and TWA operated normal intra-Europe flights: PanAm genuinely competed with BA and Sabena from London to Brussels, and with BA and Lufthansa to Frankfurt and (I'm sure I remember), Munich. And I've taken TWA from Hamburg to Amsterdam.

Open Skies isn't quite as one-sided as the US tried to make it. As a last-minute concession to get European agreement, the US agreed to obey its own laws and stop discriminating against American airlines which included famous foreigners among their shareholders.

So Virgin America was allowed to operate in the US.

will Open Skies mean cheaper flights to Europe? This article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/23/tr...tml?ref=travel
says that it will.

<i>Open Skies isn't quite as one-sided as the US tried to make it. As a last-minute concession to get European agreement, the US agreed to obey its own laws and stop discriminating against American airlines which included famous foreigners among their shareholders.

So Virgin America was allowed to operate in the US.</i>

Majority of shareholders have to be Americans. Sir Branson is a minority shareholder, so the open skies is pretty much one sided at the moment. I believe EU does have an &quot;option out&quot; clause if US does not losen up the domestic limitations by some time in 09.


<b>Momliz</b>,

I believe the open skies will have very little effect on economy tickets but it will bring down business/first class fares. JMHO.