Two aeroplanes should not need a trade lawyer. Yet Air China’s request to operate two additional round trips between Beijing and the US East Coast, timed to Xi Jinping’s state visit from 23 to 25 September, has produced a formal objection from the trade body representing every large US passenger carrier. The Department of Transportation had not ruled by the evening of 21 September, according to the South China Morning Post, with the first of the two flights already flown into New York JFK and the second due into Washington Dulles on the day Xi departs.
On its face the application is trivial. Air China sought temporary authority under Part 213 of the DOT’s rules to carry officials and delegation members connected to what it described as high level meetings. Similar requests have historically been waved through as a matter of diplomatic courtesy. The difference this time is that Airlines for America chose to put its name on a filing in docket DOT OST 2020 0052 arguing that granting the authority would enhance an existing competitive advantage held by Chinese carriers. Behind the association stand American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Alaska Airlines, JetBlue, Southwest Airlines and Air Canada. The cargo members, FedEx, UPS and Atlas Air, notably stayed out of it.
The argument is about Russia, not Beijing
The economics are not in dispute. Since March 2022, US carriers have been barred from Russian airspace, forcing East Coast to China nonstop services onto longer routings over the Pacific or the Arctic that add hours of block time and tonnes of fuel per rotation. Chinese carriers face no such restriction. In its filing, Airlines for America put the point plainly: Chinese airlines operate with the benefit of access to Russian airspace, which provides for shorter, less costly and more economical routing. China Eastern, defending the status quo in an earlier DOT proceeding, had itself warned that avoiding Russia could add two to three hours to some flights.
That asymmetry is why the bilateral cap has barely moved. Washington allowed Chinese carriers to increase to 50 weekly passenger round trips in early 2024, matching what US carriers were then permitted, and the number has since stayed frozen. Before the pandemic the two countries exchanged more than 300 weekly flights. US carriers have not been pressing to use even their existing allocation, because they cannot make a Beijing or Shanghai rotation pay when a Chinese competitor flies the same city pair in less time and at lower cost.
Why two frequencies matter to network planners
A US network carrier’s route rights to China are an asset that sits on the books whether or not it is flown. The value of that asset depends on the cap remaining symmetrical and enforced. If DOT grants ad hoc extra frequencies to a Chinese carrier under Part 213, even for a state visit, it establishes that the cap is porous at the political margin. The next request, for a trade delegation or a sporting event, becomes harder to refuse. From the perspective of an airline warehousing unused China authorities, every exception erodes the leverage that might one day be traded for a Russian overflight remedy.
That is why the objection reads less like a complaint about two flights and more like a marker laid down for the wider negotiation. In October 2025 the DOT proposed restricting Chinese carriers from using Russian airspace on US routes, a move the three big Chinese airlines opposed. Airlines for America’s filing is the passenger industry’s way of reminding the department that the proposal is still live and that the summit should not be used to quietly reset the terms.
What this means for lessors and the wider market
For aircraft lessors and financiers, the episode is a useful reminder that US China long haul capacity is a political variable rather than a market one. Widebody deployment on the trans Pacific by US carriers will not recover on demand signals alone. The binding constraint is a regulatory settlement covering both frequency caps and overflight rights, and until that settlement exists, US carriers will keep their Pacific widebodies on Japan, Korea and Taiwan routes rather than mainland China.
For Chinese carriers the picture is the reverse. Their Russian routing advantage is real but fragile. It depends on Moscow’s continued goodwill and on Washington choosing not to act on the October 2025 proposal. A carrier building a US network on the assumption that the advantage is permanent is taking geopolitical risk that its fleet plan does not price.
The Xi visit itself will proceed regardless of what the DOT decides about the second Air China flight. Delegations can travel on charter authority under Part 212 if necessary, an alternative the objectors themselves noted. The significance of the dispute is not whether a Boeing lands at Dulles on Friday. It is that the US passenger industry has decided, in writing and in public, that there will be no incremental opening of the US China air market while the Russian airspace question remains unresolved. Anyone modelling trans Pacific capacity for 2027 should take that at face value.
Boston Warwick continues to monitor bilateral aviation policy as a component of geopolitical risk for airline and lessor clients.