Originally Posted by
Often1
Then "anyone else" should be precise as precision matters when it comes to this scheme.
Yes, the routing you suggest would violate the US DOT rules which encompass what is generically referred to as cabotage. It does not matter how many carriers are involved, what matters is that there is no US carrier in the routing.
The discussion you chose to chime in on was very simply and explicitly whether a "single non-US based carrier" is necessary for it to be determined to be cabotage. We might want to be careful with our boilerplate language about lack of precision that we throw around.
Do you have a citation for your claim that the carriers don't matter? From the linked DOT enforcement action above in the thread:
In response, the Enforcement Office emphasizes that the sale or holding out, either explicitly or by course of conduct, of transportation between two points in the United States via an.intermediate point or points in a foreign country may be illegal regardless of the duration of the stopover, the passengers immigration status at the intermediate point or points, the number of tickets under which the transportation is conducted, and the number of foreign air carriers under which the transportation is conducted if they are working in concert.
This at least implies to be that it may not apply if the two foreign carriers are not "working in concert." Change my hypothetical to a connection where the two carriers don't even have an interline agreement. Is that cabotage?