ALPA....Talk about the pot and the kettle, from Open Skies:
"The US Government’s Open Skies policy has endorsed the concept of fifth freedom operations since its inception in the 1990s. Providing carriers with the commercial flexibility to operate fifths if market conditions warrant is a standard element of all US Open Skies agreements, and US carriers led by Delta at Tokyo Narita avail themselves of the opportunity to rely on them.
Delta’s extensive fifth freedom routes in Asia include daily services between Tokyo Narita and Bangkok, Beijing, Hong Kong, Manila, Shanghai, Singapore and Taipei; and five weekly services between Nagoya and Manila.
Fifth freedom intermediate and beyond operations between
Europe and the US are not unusual
• Singapore Airlines (Singapore-Frankfurt-JFK, Singapore-Moscow-Houston) • Jet Airways (Mumbai-Brussels-Newark)
• Kuwait Airways (Kuwait-London Heathrow-JFK)
• Pakistan International Airlines (Karachi-Lahore-Manchester-JFK)
• Air New Zealand (Auckland-Los Angeles-London Heathrow) • Air Tahiti Nui (Papeete-Los Angeles-Paris CDG)
• Uzbekistan Airways (Tashkent-Riga-JFK)"
Why nobody is taking DAL seriously...otherwise they would need to shut their Tokyo op down.
f.