{"id":4277,"date":"2019-04-11T10:55:45","date_gmt":"2019-04-11T15:55:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planesintheair.com\/?p=4277"},"modified":"2019-04-11T10:55:46","modified_gmt":"2019-04-11T15:55:46","slug":"qatar-airways-says-air-italy-stake-is-in-compliance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/?p=4277","title":{"rendered":"Qatar Airways Says Air Italy Stake Is In Compliance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

DUBAI\n (Reuters) – State-owned Qatar Airways on Thursday dismissed concerns \nits 49 percent stake in Air Italy breaches a 2018 aviation agreement \nbetween the United States and Qatar, designed to address U.S. concerns \nthat Gulf airlines had an unfair competitive advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\n U.S is “looking very closely” at the deal after Republicans and \nDemocrats said on Wednesday they were concerned it violated the \nagreement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Qatar\n Airways bought a stake in Italian airline Meridiana in 2017, rebranded \nit Air Italy and transformed it into a carrier with five announced \nnon-stop U.S. destinations from Milan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Qatar\n Airways said the stake was “fully compliant” with the 2018 U.S.-Qatar \nUnderstandings, an additional pact that accompanied the U.S-Qatar Open \nSkies agreement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since 2015 the largest U.S carriers – Delta Air Lines, American Airlines Group and United Airlines – have argued their Gulf rivals are being unfairly subsidized by their governments, distorting competition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Gulf\n airlines have always denied those accusations and last year separate \nvoluntary agreements were reached between the U.S. and Qatar, and the \nU.S. and the United Arab Emirates to address the concerns. Measures \nincluded the airlines not adding new flights to the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However,\n Air Italy has been flying to New York and Miami since June last year \nand was due to start serving San Francisco and Los Angeles from this \nmonth and Chicago in May.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Qatar\n Airways said in a statement its investment in Air Italy, which closed \nin September 2017, preceded the 2018 agreement but complied with it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\n said its investments in other airlines were not raised as a point of \nconcern during the discussions that led to the 2018 agreement and that \nthe deal does not mention or prohibit cross-border investments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Qatar Airways also said it did not codeshare on Air Italy’s flights to the U.S. and has no plans to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Reporting by Alexander Cornwell; Editing by Alexandra Hudson)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

State-owned Qatar Airways on Thursday dismissed concerns its 49 percent stake in Air Italy breaches a 2018 aviation agreement between the United States and Qatar, designed to address U.S. concerns that Gulf airlines had an unfair competitive advantage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[797,89,2203,868,1103],"tags":[4176,1697,539,420,118,625,116,2813,2861,160,82,4173,4172,246,4177,600,445,2880,688,2844,2063,1931,540,2811,441,303,2742,718,412,2603,454,4175,1288,2879,2604,2855,3076,4174,444,1162],"class_list":["post-4277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-airline-news","category-aviation-news","category-finance-news","category-transportation-news","category-travel-news","tag-advantage","tag-agreement","tag-air","tag-airline","tag-airlines","tag-airways","tag-american","tag-angeles","tag-arab","tag-aviation","tag-chicago","tag-competitive","tag-compliant","tag-delta","tag-democrats","tag-dubai","tag-emirates","tag-francisco","tag-government","tag-gulf","tag-italian","tag-italy","tag-lines","tag-los","tag-meridiana","tag-miami","tag-milan","tag-new","tag-news","tag-open","tag-qatar","tag-republicans","tag-reuters","tag-san","tag-skies","tag-stake","tag-states","tag-unfair","tag-united","tag-york"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4277"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4280,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4277\/revisions\/4280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planesintheair.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}