The relationship is very bitter indeed. AFAIK, Etihad has a complimentary coach service from downtown to Dubai to AUH! (featuring a complimentary comfort kit with mints in it!
Essentially, Emirates was born into what it is now in the 90's having trundled along from it's birth in 1985. Fleets of A330-200s & the (then) state of the art B777 were ordered. Emirates cottoned on early to the -300ER variant & the A380 for it's potential within the network. Looking at the network & schedules, Emirates has attempted to build a very powerful hub operation with phrases of traffic aimed at different markets. Etihad can only dream of developing a hub to rival Emirates partly due to infrastructure limitations (Emirates gets new terminal so Etihad gets new terminal...Emirates now gets massive airport, EY top trumped!) & partly because when EY gets to where EK is now, Emirates will already be leaps ahead...
The quality issue is down to personal opinion. EY have been successful in introducing a common range of products across it's fleet whereas Emirates has dozens of variations on F J & Y...
None the less, both are incredible airlines & together with Qatar are positioned at what could be said is the crossroads of the world. Dubai is pretty much central to everywhere in the globe, being on the opposite side of the world to the pacific which has very little of aviation interest...
Last edited by flyboy777; Sep 27, 2008 at 6:40 am
Reason: cockup