Senator Mike Lee has taken on a challenge that I didn’t have on my bingo card. It’s not going to win votes, but it’s imporant – fixing a law that prevents decent air service for residents of U.S. territories in the Pacific: Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and American Samoa.
Lifting cabotage restrictions for these islands, so that foreign airlines can offer service between points in these territories makes all the sense in the world. Lee calls is lifting ‘the Jones Act of the Skies’.
- Cabotage means a foreign airline carrying passengers or cargo between two U.S. points. Emirates can’t fly from New York to Miami. But Japan Airlines can’t legally fly from Guam or Saipan to Pago Pago. And no U.S. airline does, either.
- That’s 49 U.S.C. § 41703(c). There are some emergency exceptions but lack of regular service and high fares don’t qualify. (Incidentally, American Samoa and the Marianas are exempted from Jones Act and related maritime laws, while Guam is not.)
Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Mariana Islands are U.S. territories.
Their remote location should be considered in applying U.S. law, especially for restrictions that uniquely burden them due to their distance from our continent.
These Pacific islands are thousands of… pic.twitter.com/xdrRehzl2c
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) June 17, 2026
The case here is simple.
- U.S. Pacific territories are not normal domestic markets. Guam, the Mariana islands, and American Samoa are physically closer to foreign airline networks than to Hawaii, let alone the mainland. Treating them like Dallas – Houston or Los Angeles – San Francisco doesn’t make sense.
- These markets are almost meaningless to U.S. carriers but huge to residents. Special interests keep out air service while not providing it themselves, and that limits access to health care, education, family connections and tourism – and thus to economic opportunity.
- We’ve created legal monopoly. Reserving these thing routes to U.S. carriers often means service from just one airline, perhaps two weekly flights, and high fares. U.S. airlines are largely not interested in providing service, which we know because they don’t provide it.
- Foreign allied carriers are the service providers. For Guam and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, likely candidates are Japanese, Korean, Philippine, and Taiwanese airlines. They offer international service today. For American Samoa, the relevant providers are Samoan, Fijian, New Zealand, and potentially Australian.
- The welfare transfer is immoral. The law transfers wealth from a small, relatively poor, geographically isolated U.S. population to U.S. airline incumbents and aviation labor interests, while producing very little benefit at the margin.
There’s already legislation regularly introduced to fix this. The 2024 Pacific Island Flight Alternatives Act would have allowed certain Japanese, Philippine, and Korean foreign air carriers to stop in Guam or the Marianas while carrying passengers and cargo between the U.S. and a foreign destination. (That doesn’t go far enough or address American Samoa.) Similar legislation was re-introduced in 2025 as H.R. 1536.
There are 150,000 people in Guam, 47,000 in the Marianas, and 50,000 in American Samoa with GDP for those territories of $9 billion. And liberalizing air service, giving them better access to the world, could generate an additional 2% – 3% of GDP. That’s annual, and it compounds.
But there are entrenched interests that benefit from these restrictions.
- United Airlines is the largest direct beneficiary in passenger service. The airline has a narrowbody fleet based in Guan that serves 15 destinations with an average of 12 daily flights, including the Island Hopper.
Well several Asian carriers serve Guam, the only U.S. major U.S. airline offering service there is United. Foreign carriers fly to Seoul; Tokyo; Osaka; Busan; Mania; and Taipei. Cabotage doesn’t protect United from foreign airlines on international routes like Seoul – Guam, Tokyo – Saipan, or Manila – Guam. It protects United from foreign airlines selling local U.S. traffic, like Guam to Honolulu and on to the mainland, as well as domestic flights within the territories.
- Alaska Airlines gets protection from competition on Honolulu – Pago Pago as the only major carrier offering service from American Samoa to Hawaii (and on to the mainland). That is just twice-weekly service.
- There are also small regional interisland operators like Star Marianas Air.
- U.S. airline labor cares about precedent – not wanting any cabotage exemption, no matter how small, fearing it would open the door to greater foreign competition, drive down airline profits, and make it harder to extract rents. In other words, if people saw how bad cabotage was they might not support it.
Of course, U.S. airlines still benefit from other forms of protection like the Fly America Act which would still require federally funded air travel and cargo to use U.S. airline-coded flights.
This law persists because of concentrated benefits and dispersed costs. Incumbents capture most of the benefits. Residents each lose a lot, but they are geographically diffuse and politically weak. There are House delegates representing these territories but they don’t vote on final passage of legislation and they aren’t represented in the Senate.
Lifting cabotage restrictions for the Pacific territories would drive down aifares, and mean more flights, which means greater reliability of air service. You’d likely see better service between Guam and Saipan, given how short a flight it is (easy for foreign carriers to add tag flights). But we should also get better service to Honolulu to connect the territories with the mainland, and we should be especially concerned with air service from Pago Pago. This all also means better cargo capacity which drives down the price of goods.
United will say it trades off with their service, but their Guam hub already has competition to Japan and Micronesia, military (and other Fly America Act government-funded travel), and nobody is recreating the island hopper service.
Even if you don’t want to open U.S. skies to foreign carriers, these are remote U.S. island communities naturally served by Pacific aviation networks and largely ignored by American carriers. So it’s an easy win to allow non-U.S. airlines to serve these out of the way plances where the normal U.S. carrier only rules creates monopoly pricing and very limited service.
Senator Mike Lee is correct. United Airlines and, before that, Continental Airlines provided service from Guam and the other Pacific territories to the United States. I support lifting cabotage restrictions for the Pacific territories.
Good on him. I do note that foreign carriers can fly between two U.S. airports, but cannot sell tickets for that voyage. Qantas used to fly JFK-LAX. If you bought a ticket it had to be JFK-LAX-SYD (or BNE or MEL). Same thing in reverse. Of course, non of that is relevant to this issue.
Add it to the list of things that United should/will “give on” when it ultimately acquires a carved up B6 out of BK.
It’s a delicate balance, Gary. Yes, opening up isolated Pacific routes to foreign airlines would likely lower ticket prices and bring more flights to underserved islands. But, these foreign airlines need to follow U.S. safety laws and pay their crews fair, competitive wages.
Well said, @Peter. That would balance the scales, because United clearly would benefit from acquiring B6, and its slots, in the mainland, but would lose in the Pacific if this proceeded. Give and take. Not sure it’ll go that way, but at least it’s an idea. I’ve also said that we should not allow another bailout of airlines without meaningful air passenger rights (like EU261 with increased Duty of Care and compensation obligations) included as a stipulation. Again, just some ideas…
This sounds like the situation with the Jones Act, which was passed a century ago to protect American shipping. It mandates that (with emergency exceptions) any goods transported by water between U.S. ports must be carried on ships that are built in the U.S., flagged in the U.S., and predominantly crewed by Americans. But now there are very few ships like that as they are too expensive to run. So cargoes to or from the Mainland that is on foreign vessels which stop in Hawaii, Puerto Rico or the other islands have to take roundabout routes. This obviously raises prices for everything sent to or from these places.
@drrichard — Good comparison; reforms are needed there, too. However, the solution there, as here, is not to simply remove all guardrails, because it’ll similarly lead to exploitation by corporations. Ideally, some rules would stay in place so that foreign companies don’t just use underpaid crews to undercut American jobs. But, yes, isolated territories need immediate waivers for essential goods like food, medicine.
As a frequent traveller to American Samoa, the Hawaiian Air charges are sometimes ridiculous, though there are some caps. Anything to make travel to AmSam easier would be welcome.
Guam is a single island airport basically, the targets are more AmSam and the CNMI
United would be tangentially affected at best by this.
UA doesn’t serve Saipan, but watch what you wish for because they would love to get out of the Guam island hopper as it breaks even if they’re lucky. Such an action would provide an excuse for United to exit which is why it won’t happen. UA execs along with the islanders would undoubtedly educate Senator Lee on all that he is missing if there was any chance of such nonsense happening..
I visited Guam last year for less than 24 hours. It was a $900 UA ticket round trip LAX-TPE. I had this deliberate 6 pm to 7 am layover. If I were to visit Guam for more than 24 hours, I’d be paying a lot extra, more than the $2k a LAX-GUM round trip ticket would cost.
UA offered immediate connections from HNL through GUM to MNL or other islands but you won’t be able to visit Guam. And if you take the next day’s flight, the exact timing would of course exceed 24 hours by just a little. To me this is the most ridiculous part of cabotage.
I’d support this only for airlines from countries with which the US has a military alliance (e.g., Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Philippines) or to which the US is providing military support (Taiwan). I do not support allowing airlines from China, North Korea, etc.
This is the cruelty of American colonialism, which transfers wealth from politically powerless islanders to politically powerful mainland labor unions, while lowering their quality of life. Moral people can’t hope to justify it. Of course this would be much better, but complete independence from the USA should also be granted as this is an unseemly situation in 2026 for this and many other reasons.
Nice coverage and analysis.
Allowing foreign airlines to carry passengers and cargo between Guam, the Northern Marianas, and American Samoa would remove U.S. government control over a significant portion of the air transportation serving these strategically located territories at a time when China has demonstrated its intent to isolate Guam and disrupt American operations there in any conflict involving Taiwan. Foreign carriers operating these routes would be free to suspend both passenger and cargo service whenever tensions escalate or conflict begins, since unlike U.S. airlines they cannot be directed to continue flying or to prioritize military requirements through the Civil Reserve Air Fleet and government contracts. This would cut off the movement of American citizens, military families, repair parts, medical supplies, and other critical sustainment precisely when those islands could face isolation or attack. The policy would also shrink the pool of domestically controlled aircraft and crews available for wartime surge operations while establishing a precedent that cedes direct authority over transportation links on U.S. sovereign territory in the Pacific. The resulting dependence on foreign operators for essential connectivity and cargo movement between these forward positions would leave the military with far less reliable options for sustaining its forces and protecting U.S. personnel in a theater where rapid and controllable logistics are essential.