Originally Posted by
iahphx
The subsidy debate is heating up in the blogosphere. TheCrankyFlier discussed it early in this week, and now we have Lucky and Gary Leff dueling it out.
Lucky, who's apparently been briefed about the USA airlines' report, adds lots of color to the dispute: showing how the President of Emirates Airlines holds just about every other aviation leadership post in the country (much easier to move the money around this way). But then Lucky drops an extraordinary bombshell: he says the gov't simply picked up Emirates recent $4 BILLION fuel hedge loss. If that's not a subsidy, I don't know what is.
http://onemileatatime.boardingarea.c...tem-heres-why/
And this, of course, is the fundamental difference between what's going on with the Middle East airlines and what has previously occurred in the int'l aviation industry. Before, every country, to some extent, extended favors or subsidies to their own airlines. But these were marginal benefits: they kept badly run airlines (Alitalia, anyone?) in the air. But they didn't pour billions of dollars into an effort at world domination, such that tiny countries can order half the widebody planes built in the world. This is crazy stuff. And I suspect the current fight is the beginning of the end of this nuttiness.
That's some awfully strange logic? On the one hand you claim that's Emirates must be subsidized because it is government owned yet you express shock if the owner clears a liability. What do Emirates accounts say? If they have hidden it in the accounts then it you have an argument otherwise it is more huff and puff over nothing. You seem to forget Emirates is owned by the Emirate of Dubai not the UAE. Dubai does not have a large oil industry like Abu Dhabi, it didn't have enough money to bail out its property groups several years ago so why do you think it has the cash to keep throwing at Emirates? Etihad and Qatar are a somewhat different story but this is the Emirates thread!