Why BWI flights to Paris lack wings

There are so many opportunities for BWI airport to start offering a half-decent menu of international routes - and so many reasons that little may come of them.

The biggest opportunity begins next month. Starting March 28, the Open Skies Agreement lets airlines fly to the United States from any European airport and allows U.S. carriers to land anywhere in the European Union. The deal scraps decades of red tape and exponentially multiplies the trans-Atlantic options of airports.

No airport seems better poised to benefit than Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall, which is No. 1 in my unscientific ranking of great airports with underused international terminals that are near jillions of people who want to use them.

Alas, what diplomats have given, economics, inertia and another layer of regulation withhold. BWI will have good overseas offerings someday. But, says BWI marketing chief James G. Walsh, "We don't expect Open Skies to be revolutionary. We expect it to be evolutionary."

Revolution made BWI. From People Express in the 1980s to AirTran Airways and Southwest Airlines today, the airport built traffic with insurgent, low-fare fleets.

Now deregulation has prompted a European airline uprising, and what better American beachhead for the new guys than Baltimore? BWI is wooing the likes of Ryanair, EasyJet and other European versions of Southwest.

Other than Ryanair, Walsh wouldn't reveal which airlines have gotten BWI flowers and candy. Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary has said he wants to start trans-Atlantic service by 2010 or so, possibly to BWI or Providence, R.I. It's fair to assume other European carriers have the same idea.

Southwest, which accounted for more than half of BWI's traffic last year, is looking toward Europe itself. In June Southwest boss Gary C. Kelly said the company might offer "code-sharing" (booking passengers on multiple airlines with one transaction) to Europe in a few years.

Open Skies will allow code-sharing on British Airways' London-Baltimore route, BWI's only European offering. That could generate new BWI traffic, says John Byerly, who negotiated the Open Skies deal for the State Department. AirTran, BWI's No. 2 airline, recently upgraded its computers for international code sharing.

Problem: Planes for new trans-Atlantic routes are hard to come by. Ryanair and Southwest fly Boeing 737s, which generally can't hop the pond. Asian airlines have largely locked up Boeing's and Airbus' production of transoceanic planes through 2014 or so, says Walsh.

Even if he could get them, Kelly has characterized a trans-Atlantic venture with Southwest planes as "higher-risk and therefore perhaps a little further out." Ryanair tried to solve the long-haul plane shortage by bidding for Aer Lingus, in which it already owns a minority stake. But regulators blocked a deal. (Aer Lingus dumped BWI for Dulles.)

Existing trans-Atlantic carriers are already locked in with U.S. partners, and those partners don't use BWI. A boost in demand for European travel might make BWI more attractive, but at the moment the opposite is happening. High fuel prices have made any travel expensive, and the cheap dollar makes Europe even more expensive when you get there.

A true open-skies treaty - the kind that allows European airlines to buy U.S. carriers and rejigger the whole system - is years or decades away. Even if international travel doubles from current levels, Dulles will always be a formidable BWI competitor because it has practically limitless room to expand.

"I think there are possibilities" for international growth at BWI, says diplomat Byerly, who lives in Bolton Hill and would probably like nothing better than to pop over to the local airport for his next transoceanic flight.

Legally, the Open Skies agreement allows you to fly straight from BWI to Paris or Athens, Greece. Practically, Byerly and most other European travelers will be taking the endless, dismal trip to Dulles for the foreseeable future.

jay.hancock@baltsun.com

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