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Comment by em3rgent0rdr | Hacker News Reader

Will US airlines also propose to get rid of rules preventing foreign airlines from competing with domestic flights?

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/transportat...

Which may actually reduce costs and increase consumer choice, their stated goal of this whole imitative. Somehow I don't expect that to be one of the cut regulations.

An "open skies" rule allowing foreign carriers to operate flights would reduce prices and increase consumer choice, however the restriction exists primarily for national security reasons. The federal government needs a large domestic airline industry as a strategic transportation reserve that they can commandeer to move troops during a war or other large emergency.

I imagine in those cases the government can and will force any airplane in American soil or airspace to act like this, whether they are owned by an American or foreign corporation.

Sure for a minor incident. But any foreign airline would immediately move their planes out of the US if war broke out. And there would generally be warning signs before it happens, giving them plenty of time to discontinue flights.

Your imagination is not realistic. There's no legal way to require foreign pilots who are citizens of another country to follow US government orders. And it's not possible in the short term to put US pilots on those airplanes because each airline has a unique combination of airframes, engines, and avionics. Plus if the maintenance and logistics infrastructure aren't located in the USA then those airplanes would quickly become inoperable.

A foreign airline operating domestic routes in the US would likely use many US pilots/employees.

That seems as anachronistic as the second amendment. The US military has its own logistics, and that's an understatement. 45 C-5, 222 C-17, 333 C-130. It's nothing but a pretext to protect domestic companies instead of doing what's best for the citizens.

Protectionism is certainly a factor but you don't seem to understand how much airlift is required to sustain an expeditionary military in the field. Current transport capacity has been stretched for years with the ongoing conflicts. At any given time many of those aircraft are out of service for maintenance.

To quote the Slate article linked above:

> In practice, despite fighting two wars simultaneously for a decade, CRAF seems to have been activated just once at the very beginning of the Iraq War when the Pentagon activated 47 passenger aircraft and 31 wide-body cargo planes.

> On the other hand, as a 2006 Congressional Research Service report on the program observed, “the program is voluntary” and domestic airlines participate in it because it’s financially beneficial to them.

But my main gripe with it is that the US government apparently thinks it more important to maintain a military airlift reserve to be able to quickly fly soldiers and equipment to other parts of the world in a hypothetical future war than to let their own citizens have a well functioning free market that would give them more affordable transportation everyday. It's nothing but corporations first, citizens last, under the guise of national security. Just like the new steel tariffs are said to be because of national security.

Some things are more important than well-functioning free markets. The recent wars have actually been relatively small with only a small fraction of the total military deployed at any given time. CRAF is an insurance policy for a potential major future conflict that requires transporting the bulk of the military around the world on short notice. All wars are hypothetical ... until someone starts shooting.

And wars are typically more hypothetical when no-one thinks they can beat you because you're so well prepared.

When foreign countries stop heavily subsidizing their airlines, sure. It’s not free trade to allow subsidized products into your country, it’s economic lunacy.

It was a sad day when Virgin was sold out from underneath Branson, because of this very regulation.

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