• money laundering
• forex broker
• FIX Connectivity Solutions

If American Airlines wins the right to fly to China from Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, the airline's executives might owe some thanks to rival Southwest Airlines.

That's because the battle over the Wright Amendment, sparked in 2004 by Southwest, helped lay the groundwork for American's campaign to win the China route.

"For American, it was a lot easier to build our case because of the Wright situation," said Will Ris, senior vice president of government affairs for Fort Worth-based American. "We've been out there for two years, talking about the D/FW hub to people in small towns, in small cities and in Congress." Those contacts were revisited to garner support for the China flight.

The strength of American's hub at Dallas/Fort Worth Airport, with 800 daily flights to 129 U.S. cities, has been the airline's central argument in both supporting the Wright Amendment and pressing for new service to China.

In the Wright debate, American executives argued against lifting that law's restrictions on Dallas Love Field, where flights are limited to Texas and a handful of nearby states.

Airline officials said a repeal would force it to shift scores of flights to Love from D/FW to compete with Southwest, which they said would weaken the hub and eliminate many destinations.

Ris and other American executives visited many small cities and airports, telling local officials that they could lose service to D/FW and the hundreds of cities beyond the hub if Wright were repealed.

When the opportunity for new China service arose, they enlisted many of those same officials to support American's bid, with the argument that a nonstop flight from D/FW to Beijing would mean one-stop service from their cities to China.

"When we went back to talk about China, they were very well educated about how the hub works and eager to support us," Ris said.

And American executives hope D/FW could eventually connect Asia to Latin America as well.

American is one of four airlines that have filed petitions with the federal Transportation Department, seeking permission to operate a new daily flight between the U.S. and China that will begin in 2007.

Continental Airlines has proposed a flight from Newark (N.J.) Airport to Shanghai; Northwest Airlines wants to fly from Detroit to Shanghai; and United Airlines has asked to fly from Washington, D.C., to Beijing.

Only one carrier will get the nod, and a decision is expected around the end of the year. The campaign has been heated; United spent an estimated $400,000 on newspaper ads in Washington aimed at persuading government officials to choose its bid.

Connection the key

Dozens of government officials and business leaders from small and medium-sized cities have sent letters to the Transportation Department supporting American's bid. A D/FW flight would create the first one-stop service to Beijing for 30 airports in eight states.

In addition, it would add the first competitive one-stop service to an additional 63 airports in 31 states.

Overall, 95 airports would get one-stop flights to China through D/FW if the American proposal wins.

American estimates that most passengers would connect to Beijing through D/FW from large cities, including Houston, St. Louis, Chicago and Miami. But the airline also forecast passenger traffic from smaller cities. In the first year of operation, the flight would carry more than 700 passengers from Huntsville, Ala., for example, or about 450 from Columbia, S.C., or nearly 300 from McAllen in the Rio Grande Valley, the airline estimates.

"American's proposal would particularly benefit consumers in Baton Rouge," said Anthony Marino, director of aviation for the airport in that Louisiana city, in his letter of support. The flight would also "maximize benefits to the nation by creating a new gateway in the United States to China," he said.

"From the very beginning, when we've thought about China, we've thought about it in terms of our hubs, particularly D/FW," said Henry Joyner, American's senior vice president of planning.

Joyner has been driving American's decades-long quest to expand into China. He studied Chinese history and culture in school and is fluent in Mandarin.

"Having D/FW as a major aviation hub is really the core of our argument," he said.

Indeed, American's case for service focuses more on the hub and connecting possibilities than the others'. American touts not only the number of cities that will gain one-stop service but also the airport's potential status as the first southern connection to China.

Only three cities -- Newark, Chicago and San Francisco -- now have nonstop service to China.

United's chief argument is that it would connect the capitals of the United States and China for the first time. Continental, meanwhile, touts the connection between the nations' top financial centers, New York and Shanghai.

Northwest makes a similar case regarding the strength of its hub in Detroit. The airline says it would create convenient service to Shanghai for more than 100 cities.

American executives counter that similar service already exists in nearby Chicago, and that D/FW would open access to new parts of the country.

"The D/FW route map just leaps off the page," Joyner said.

Latin America

Another tantalizing opportunity for American -- and D/FW -- would be the opportunity to use the airport to connect China and Latin America.

It's inconvenient for the airline to connect Chinese passengers to Latin America now because federal security rules require international passengers to obtain a visa and go through customs even if they're just connecting at a U.S. airport.

American and other airlines are lobbying for the rules to be loosened so that international passengers and their baggage can connect within a secure area at the airport without going through customs and without a visa.

D/FW's new international terminal is designed to allow such connections if the rules change.

"Over time, we're hopeful that D/FW could become an effective gateway from Asia to Latin America," Joyner said.

Airline consultant Mike Boyd of the Boyd Group of Evergreen, Colo., said that's an important consideration for American's bid.

"China-Latin America trade will be the next huge traffic growth pattern," Boyd wrote recently.

"American's hub at D/FW is right in the middle of the two regions."

American executives say Northwest and United are at a disadvantage, because both carriers already have substantial service to China. And Continental already has service to Beijing from Newark, so that airline's Shanghai service would be redundant, they say.

Still, they acknowledge that it's impossible to know who might win. United's capital-to-capital selling point has some analysts giving that airline the best chance, and others have pointed out that American recently discontinued service to Osaka, Japan, from D/FW.

And American is still negotiating with its pilots over an agreement to fly the route. Pilots have asked for some contract improvements before they will sign off on the long flight.

The airline's rivals have also criticized American's bid, saying there isn't enough demand in North Texas for Beijing flights to justify the service.

"The entire current daily D/FW to Beijing traffic could fit into a 44-seat American Eagle ERJ-140 with seven seats to spare," Continental Airlines executives wrote in a brief filed with the Transportation Department, and pointed out that the New York-to-Shanghai market is five times larger.

Joyner countered that regional demand is more relevant.

"We're all trying to knock down each other on this," he said. "I'm hopeful that the [Transportation Department] will sit down and look at who made the best business case."