Actual Control of U.S. Air Carriers

Résumé

Current law requires that U.S. citizens actually control each U.S. air carrier, that U.S. citizens own or control at least 75 percent of the shareholders' voting interest, and that the president and two- thirds of the directors and the managing officers must be U.S. citizens. The Department interprets this law in conducting initial and continuing fitness reviews of U.S. air carriers. We are withdrawing a proposal to modify by regulation the standards we apply in those cases where "actual control" by U.S. citizens is at issue. The proposal being withdrawn would have narrowed the scope of our inquiry in such cases to those core matters affecting compliance with U.S. requirements affecting safety, security, national defense and corporate governance. These rationalized standards for deciding whether U.S. citizens maintained "actual control" of a carrier would have applied only to proposed transactions involving investors whose countries have an open-skies air services agreement with the United States and offer reciprocal investment opportunities to U.S. citizens. Our interpretation of other aspects of the statutory citizenship requirement would have been unchanged. Although we are with