Delta Air Lines has found it necessary to apologize for comments CEO Richard Anderson made to CNN this week about the “irony” of claims by Persian Gulf carriers that U.S. airlines benefitted unfairly from government financial support immediately following 9/11. In case you missed it, Anderson’s comments related to the recent effort by the big U.S. airlines to convince lawmakers to revisit Open Skies policies to address what they claim amount to government subsidies enjoyed by Qatar Airways, Emirates Airline and Etihad Airways. The Gulf airlines counter that those same U.S. airlines asking for help from their government now have already benefitted handsomely from bankruptcy laws and federal funding to help them recover from 9/11.
In response, Anderson chose to play the terrorism card. “It's a great irony to have the United Arab Emirates from the Arabian peninsula talk about that, given the fact that our industry was really shocked by the terrorism of 9/11, which came from terrorists from the Arabian peninsula,” Anderson told Richard Quest of CNN on Monday.
Gregory Polek has spent his entire career in aviation journalism with AIN, starting as a proofreader and assistant to then-managing editor Mary Mahoney in 1995 after serving an internship with New Jersey Monthly magazine and completing his B.A. degree in English/Writing at New Jersey’s William Paterson College. By 1997 Polek accepted a position as an associate editor, covering the regional airline beat for Aviation International News in place of retiring industry veteran Don Anderson. The assignment took Polek across North America and Europe to profile regional airlines varying in size and mission from the likes of floatplane operators Kenmore Air and Chalk’s Ocean Airways to regional jet operators such as SkyWest and American Eagle. Today, in his dual role as Air Transport Editor and International Airshow Editor, Polek writes, edits, and manages AIN’s commercial aviation content while overseeing each of the company’s daily international air show publications in Paris, Farnborough, Singapore, and Dubai. Most recently Polek has assumed oversight of daily coverage of the Helicopter Association International’s annual Heli-Expo convention.
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