Fedex flies into open skies row
BRITAIN’S economy will suffer unless it removes restrictions on cargo flights by international airlines, Fred Smith, chairman and chief executive of FedEx, the world’s largest express air freight company, has warned.
FedEx flies cargo into the UK but is prevented from picking up freight and carrying it to Europe by a 1978 air services treaty between Britain and America.
“At the moment our planes are flying out of the UK carrying acres of air,” said Smith.
Failure to relax the restrictions would result in Britain missing out on exports of high-value goods. “All the things we carry are high-value items from the sectors of the economy that are growing faster than GDP. If you don’t participate in that, you are going to grow less fast and be economically disadvantaged,” Smith said.
FedEx would immediately start direct freight services to Manchester and Glasgow if the restrictions were lifted, Smith said. The airline currently flies into Stansted. Its European base is Paris.
FedEx’s hopes for a relaxation of the rules were dashed this year when plans for an alliance between British Airways and American Airlines were rejected by US regulators. Cargo and passenger flights are governed by the same treaty.
Smith last week asked John Spellar, the aviation minister, to approve a dispensation from the treaty for FedEx.
“We have got dragged into this other issue about who gets to fly in and out of Heathrow – and we don’t even fly there ourselves,” he said. FedEx has permits for flights to six onward destinations from the UK.
British cargo airlines oppose the Fedex push for liberalisation, saying similar opportunities for onward flights within America are not available to them. “We have no objection to what they are asking for,” said Smith.
He confirmed that FedEx intended to buy 10 freighter versions of the Airbus A380 superjumbo. “We would hope to have that worked out by the end of the year. We like that plane very much, it fits with the way we think,” he said.
A deal with FedEx would be a big boost for Airbus, which has said it intends to launch a freighter version of the A380 in 2008 or 2009.
(C) The Sunday Times, 2002
