Boeing, Delta spend millions in fight over America's Export-Import Bank

Washington

LAST week, with little notice, a federal judge here tossed out Delta Air Lines' longstanding claim that the government's export credit agency - which, among other things, provides loan guarantees to overseas airlines for the purchase of Boeing jets - was helping international competitors at the airline's expense.

Delta offered only a shrug. Judicial opinions aside, the continued existence of the Export-Import Bank of the United States turns more on bare- knuckle politics than on legal niceties. "We pursued all our options in court, but we've known all along this is going to be won or lost in Congress," said Trebor Banstetter, a Delta spokesman in Atlanta.