American Airlines CEO defends decision to miss White House meeting

President Donald Trump told US airlines he would help them compete with foreign carriers that are aided by their governments, a crucial signal of White House support for an industry campaign that began in 2015.

Trump is reported as telling a meeting of airline and United States airport executives: “I hear we’re spending billions and billions of dollars, it’s a system that’s totally out of whack”.

“I hear the government contracted for a system that’s the wrong system”, Trump said. Trump said that NextGen is over budget and will not produce a good ATC system when it is finished.

Gary Kelly, chief executive of Southwest, told Trump that “the single biggest opportunity for aviation is to modernize the air traffic control system”.

The National Air Traffic Controller Association is pro-privatization, while other FAA unions are against it, reasoning they have made significant progress regarding modernization throughout the past ten years and airlines have been direct recipients of the benefits.

The president’s January 27 order barring US entry for refugees and visitors from seven predominantly Muslim countries isn’t scheduled for discussion, the official said. The airline flies an all-Boeing fleet of 120 planes and has ordered 120 more, with 500 USA based crew members and hundreds more planned, he said Tuesday.

That subject came up only briefly Thursday, and it did not go well for the US airlines.

Trump was interested, however, in the expected $4 billion redesign of LaGuardia Airport, said William Vanecek, aviation director at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport and chair of the airports council.

In a White House meeting with airline executives, Trump promised a “phenomenal” tax plan, but offered no specifics other than citing the need to a lower tax burden on businesses. He bowed out citing a scheduling conflict and has been in touch with the Trump administration, said a spokesman for the airline.

U.S. airlines have complained that subsidies to Middle Eastern rivals from their national governments have left them at a disadvantage.

The US has a “huge economic interest” in the deal, Spicer said on Thursday, as it is important for US jobs – though he said he did not want to “get ahead of the president”. After the meeting airline stocks, including JetBlue, Delta and United Continental, rose.

That has roiled US carriers and labor unions concerned about an unfair advantage for Norwegian that they claim could cost them their jobs.

The meeting is another in a series President Trump has held with industry leaders. The three believe that there exists an unfair trade agreement in which Etihad, Emirates and Qatar airlines are cheating the system by accepting more than $50 billion in government subsidies for the past several years.

Like the Gulf carrier issue, the airline industry isn’t united on the best path forward for air traffic control.

They’ve called on President Trump to reverse the Obama administration’s decision to allow Norwegian Air International to fly routes into the U.S. They say the Ireland-based company uses its location to bypass labor laws and hire cheaper flight crews.

The president said he has a particular interest in air travel and wants to upgrade U.S. aviation infrastructure.