PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - One rule for US another for the rest
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Old 20th Oct 2007, 02:51
  #26 (permalink)  
TWApilot
 
Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: USA
Age: 53
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Fly America policy????? Please enlighten me. I have no idea what that is, and I've been flying for US airlines for 12 years.

If you are referring to Cabotage, that is banned worldwide. No airline is permitted to sell tickets on flights enplaning and deplaning passengers solely within a country other than their own. It cannot, and does not, happen anywhere on earth.

Omni is a Charter carrier. We NEVER sell tickets on any route. We only charter our airplanes to other companies or governments, and those other organizations choose who and what to put on our airplanes. We do not hold out ourselves as an airline operating from point A to point B. We simply charter our jets to whoever wants to purchase them. In this case, it is the MOD.

Therefore, we are NOT engaging in Cabotage. If we were selling tickets to the general public on flights within the UK, taking passengers from London to Glasgow and so forth, yes that would be Cabotage and it would be illegal. We do not do that.

To say that the USA is alone in prohibiting Cabotage is foolish.... It was not the USA which set up the ban on Cabotage in the first place. Cabotage was prohibited when the "Freedoms of the Air" were listed at the time of ICAO's formation in 1944.

Every country affiliated with ICAO has a responsibility to uphold the ban on Cabotage.

What you describe as a Fly America policy is probably nothing more than the USA adhearing to ICAO's prohibition against Cabotage.
Every other country should do the same.

But again, Omni is a Charter Airline. We do not sell tickets on our flights. We have never sold tickets. We simply offer a whole airplane, to be chartered by whoever wants to purchase it, and we then fly from wherever that company wants us to fly to wherever they want to go. That is NOT cabotage.

Also, I already mentioned that the US government charters airplanes from other countries routinely, such as the Russian Antonovs. This "Fly America" idea you put forth doesn't make sense.
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