For example, Emirates Airline’s President, Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, is also President of Dubai Civil Aviation Authority, Chairman of Dubai Airports, and President of dnata. That would be like Doug Parker being CEO of American Airlines, head of the FAA, and President of DFW, ORD, LAX, JFK, and MIA Airports.
Emphasis mine. The UAE counterpart of the FAA is the GCAA, not the DCAA. DCAA does not have the sort of regulatory authority that the GCAA does. This is
not a "Tom Wheeler is a dingo" situation.
Second, some components of your ticket cost may already go to the airport in the form of landing fees paid by airlines to airports.
Airports may choose whether they charge the airlines, charge each passenger, or both. In Dubai [as well as Abu Dhabi and Qatar], transit passengers merely pass through a metal detector. Origin/Destination passengers, on the other hand, use immigration and customs facilities - those officers must be paid, and those Smart Gates must have cost money to develop. I don't see this being a meaningful comparison.
There is also the labor cost of keeping the airport clean, but labor is cheap in that region. Let's also not forget about transit passengers spending money in the airports, as
eternaltransit brought up.
Finally, in the spirit of making unsubstantiated claims, let's all not forget about the $4 billion that Lucky was paid to write that post, or the $40 billion in total for all of his commentary on the issue
