The U.S. airline industry's largest trade group said today it will continue its legal fight challenging billions of dollars in loans to foreign airlines that the organization's lawyers said are hurting domestic carriers' ability to remain competitive.
A federal judge in Washington this month rejected a request from the Air Transport Association of America to block U.S.-backed loans to Air India for the purchase of Boeing Company commercial jets.
The airline association’s attorneys said the U.S. Export-Import Bank loans, which promote domestic goods in the global market, threaten to take away international airline routes--and, ultimately, American jobs--from domestic carriers. The group contends Delta abandoned its New York to Mumbai service because of the loans.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of Washington’s federal trial court said in the ruling last Friday that the airline association, represented by Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel, has not shown how the loans are damaging to domestic carriers.
Justice Department lawyers said an injunction would have led to turmoil in the international market for airplane financing. The bulk of the Export-Import Bank’s loans go to the purchase of aircraft.
Today, the association’s attorneys, including Wan Kim, a Kellogg Huber partner in Washington, told Boasberg that they want expedited proceedings to address the merits of the suit challenging the loans.
Central to the suit is the association’s allegation that the Export-Import Bank should have reviewed how the Air India loans would harm the U.S. airline industry.
Kim told Boasberg that the airline association, whose members are major domestic carriers, is still reviewing whether it will appeal the denial of the preliminary injunction. In the meantime, Kim said, the group will move forward with court papers addressing the merits of the case.
The schedule Boasberg and the lawyers crafted today in court means that the dispute won’t like be resolved until at least this spring. Boeing was scheduled this month and in March to deliver planes to Air India.
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