President Donald Trump and several airline CEOs had a contentious meeting earlier this month that included Trump bringing up one carrier's struggling stock price, according to a new report.
NBC News cited 10 officials who were either at the July 18 meeting or were briefed about what took place in the Oval Office that day. Over the course of an hour, Trump listened to U.S. carriers' gripes about Middle Eastern carriers because they're government-subsidized and offer flights at below-market prices.
The group initially got Trump's attention via ads on "Fox and Friends," a program Trump often tweets about. The meeting, however, quickly turned into a shouting match between the airline officials, a group that included the CEOs from American Airlines, United Airlines, JetBlue, Atlas Air, FedEx, and Qatar Airways.
Akbar al Baker, who leads Qatar Airways, called the American CEOs "liars" for saying his airline is skirting international agreements to offer low-cost fares between the U.S. Europe — without even stopping in the Middle East.
Several times during the meeting, Trump was critical of Delta Airlines CEO Ed Bastian for not attending the gathering.
"The president kept going back to it," a meeting attendee told NBC. "There was a lot of yelling."
Trump gave American Airlines CEO Doug Parker grief over the carrier's stock price, which has plummeted from more than $54 a share in January 2018 to under $31 a share.
Trump also admonished Delta for buying planes from Airbus — a European company — instead of Boeing, based in Chicago.
A week before the meeting, Qatar Airways cut a deal to buy five Boeing 777 jets and GE engines. The agreement was signed at the White House.
Trump ended the July 18 meeting by telling the U.S. CEOs they should bring up their concerns with the Department of Transportation.
In the weeks before the meeting, meanwhile, airlines began rerouting flights around Iran after the country shot down a U.S. drone that had the wingspan larger than that of a Boeing 737.
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