Airlines for America has formally opposed Air China's request for two additional roundtrip flights between Beijing and New York and Washington, filing its objection with the Department of Transportation's public docket on September 17, 2026.

The request is temporary rather than structural. The flights are tied to Chinese President Xi Jinping's planned visit to the United States from September 23–25, 2026, for talks with President Donald Trump, according to China's Foreign Ministry. Reuters first reported the carriers' opposition.

A4A, which represents American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and other US carriers, wants DOT to approve the flights as charters rather than scheduled service. The distinction matters: scheduled approval, the group argues, could set a precedent that Chinese airlines use to pursue more regular US frequencies while the underlying dispute over Russian airspace access remains unresolved.

That dispute is fundamentally about route economics on China–US East Coast city pairs. Russian airspace offers Chinese carriers shorter tracks for some flights, cutting both block time and fuel burn. US airlines cannot use those routes. Russia barred US carriers from its airspace in retaliation for Washington's March 2022 ban on Russian aircraft following the invasion of Ukraine. Chinese airlines faced no such restriction.

The detours, A4A argues, effectively lock US airlines out of competing on key nonstop East Coast–China routes. For a carrier like United or American weighing a New York–Beijing nonstop, the fuel penalty and added crew time from routing around Russia change the revenue equation enough to make the service marginal or unviable.

The filing is the latest move in a dispute that has already produced one failed regulatory intervention. In October 2025, DOT proposed barring Chinese carriers from using Russian airspace on US routes, arguing that unequal access had harmed American competitors. The proposal was shelved ahead of trade talks with China after opposition from other US agencies, Reuters reported.

Chinese airlines fought that proposal directly. China Eastern said avoiding Russia could add two to three hours to some routes and increase fuel consumption. Air China and China Southern both warned of adverse effects on passengers, including higher fares and disrupted connections.

The standoff leaves DOT with a narrow decision on Air China's request — charter versus scheduled designation for two roundtrips — but a much broader unresolved question about competitive parity on transpacific routes. With the previous routing-restriction proposal shelved and trade negotiations continuing, US carriers' recourse for now runs through the docket, one filing at a time.

How DOT classifies the Xi visit flights will signal whether the agency treats Chinese airspace advantage as a structural issue requiring a policy response, or handles it case by case as diplomatic events generate new frequency requests.