Nair wrote:I support George Welch...I don't understand how buying a few planes can allow America to control India's policy. India is not Pakistan or Iraq...
You don't? An example. Canada and the US are good friends, allies, neighbours, the biggest commercial partners, members of NATO, members of NORAD, members of NAFTA etc. Canada is the US's biggest oil and gas supplier. Best friends.
On March 6 2006, a Canadian Airliner taking off from Cuba to Canada loses its rudder in flight shortly after take-off.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Transat_Flight_961
http://www.iasa.com.au/folders/Safety_I ... er-sep.htm
It returns for an uneventful landing in Cuba. Airbus, who manufactured the Airbus 310, after inspecting the aircraft, decides that its better to change the whole tail fin, since they don't know what kind of stress it was subjected to when the rudder separated.
The A-310 is no longer in production and there are no new tail fins in stock. No problem. Airbus owns several old Airbus 310s, and a used tail-fin can be removed from one of those and shipped to Cuba. The Airbus-owned A-310s were parked in the desert in the United States for conservation. Airbus goes to remove one of those tail-fins to ship it to Cuba.
The US refused. Why?. There is a US embargo against Cuba. Nothing can be shipped from the US to Cuba, especially not aircraft parts. That the Airbus was French-made, was Canadian-owned, that the old Airbuses parked in the US desert were Airbus-owned, all that didn't matter. No tail-fin was being shipped from the US to Cuba. To by-pass the restriction, some people considered removing the US-based tail fin and shipping it to Canada , and removing another tail fin from another Canadian-based Airbus 310 and shipping that one to Cuba. The the "US" tail-fin would be installed on the aircraft in Canada. Airbus considered but quickly refused: that was way too risky and too much was at stake. If the US frowned at that little shipment criss-cross, they could take severe punitive action, not only against Airbus, but also against the Canadian Airline......
So finally Airbus had to custom-build a new A-310 tail-fin in France which took months, during which the Canadian airliner stayed stuck in Cuba, and which cost millions of dollars more than removing one of the tail-fins located in the US desert.
All this because Canada does not support the US-imposed unilateral embargo against Cuba.
Now, go ahead and buy C-17s, give Boeing an exclusive maintenance contract for the maintenance of these aircraft (you will have no choice, thats a condition that will be imposed when you buy) and go ahead and break down or have a mishap in some place the US does not approve of, and see what happens when you need Boeing engineers to come and fix it.....