US air carriers shamefully playing on anti-Arab bias
Delta Airlines is leading an effort to petition the US government to sanction Etihad Airways, Emirates and Qatar Airways. They charge that these three airlines have received government subsidies and are unfairly competing with US carriers resulting in a loss of jobs for American workers. Americans for Fair Skies, the coalition formed by Delta, has submitted a brief of its complaint to Congress, started an online campaign and is sponsoring TV and radio advertisements to make its case.
What is troubling is that because its case is weak, the coalition has shamefully stooped to subtle and not-so-subtle Arab-baiting in the effort to demonise the Arab carriers.
In one ad, for example, Etihad, Emirates and Qatar Airways are described as coming from the “oil rich Arabian peninsula” and receiving “billions of government oil money”. If you didn’t get the point, an accompanying graphic shows an Oriental-looking structure that turns out be an Arab bank pumping dollars into an airplane. So much for subtlety.
One of the leaders of the effort, Delta Air Lines CEO Richard Anderson, threw all subtlety to the winds in a mid-February CNN interview. Noting that the Arab carriers had rebutted the allegations and countered with the charge that the US airlines themselves had been the recipients of a $15-billion Congressional financial package after 9/11, Mr Anderson said it was “a great irony” that such talk came from “the UAE from the Arabian Peninsula” because “our industry was really shocked by the terrorism of 9/11, which came from terrorists from the Arabian Peninsula”.
An Emirates spokesperson responded by noting that Mr Anderson’s statements “were deliberately crafted and delivered for special effect”. His assessment is spot on. The crass comments and the content of the US airline coalition’s ads are part of a tried and tested strategy used by politicians and businessmen alike.
For example, in their effort to win public support for renewable energy, liberals, environmental groups and companies that would benefit from the expanded use of wind and solar power, could make an environmental impact argument or a case for resource conservation. Instead, all too often, they fall back on Arab-baiting. At the 2008 Democratic party convention, for example, then Montana governor Brian Schweitzer repeatedly referenced “Arab oil” or “Middle East oil”. Each time he did so with a snarl and each time, he was greeted by thunderous applause. And in a famous 2009 TV ad promoting energy independence, the same point is made by ominous-sounding Arabic music against a desert backdrop featuring burning oil wells guarded by American soldiers. Arabic script was thrown in for good measure.
All of this is deliberate. Pollsters who have conducted focus-groups on this issue have established that if a politician speaks about “dependency on oil” he gets a less emotional response than if he were to add “Arab” or “Arabian” or even “Middle East”. And just as politicians pay attention to such polling data, so do airline CEOs.
The US airlines’ campaign itself is based on flimsy charges of subsidies and protectionism. In reality, the US aviation industry was founded on both. In 1998, Congressional Research Services completed a study of US government subsidies to American aviation from 1918 to 1998. It totalled $155 billion.
In addition to the post 9/11 bailout and loan guarantee bills, the US government continues to fund infrastructure and operational services and to provide subsidies to US airlines for “essential air services” (subsidies underwriting costs for airlines to keep smaller markets on their routes) and the “reserve air fleet” (subsidies for agreeing to make their planes available, if needed, to the government). There’s also an indirect subsidy in the form of the requirement that government employees must “fly American”. Airports and the air traffic control infrastructure are built and maintained by tax-exempt entities. And a federal law prohibits foreign carriers from flying passengers between US cities.
Source: www.thenational.ae