NOIR, thank you so much for posting that article - especially as I am not registered on flightglobal!
Just a quick comment before I reply more thoroughly later (I can hear the sighs of relief all the way here
) but:
- it is quite interesting that the report contents are being drip fed out into the public bit by bit, a classic PR move to sustain things in the public consciousness
- telling that only EY and QR seem to have the obvious cash injection subsidies of interest free loans: things that we have already conceded in this thread, but EK is only alleged to have a loss "absorbed" by the government, as if any kind of loss is now evidence of a subsidy, even though 2.4 billion USD is still able to be covered by 2-3 years of EK profits and cash on hand/commercial financing
- state benefits such as "a ban on unionised labor": it will be interesting to see the methodology and assumptions made to calculate that economic value, along with the economic values calculated of "state benefits". Of course, it doesn't mention which state is doing the subsidy (here's looking at you, ExIm bank) and I especially like the way that "Emirates received 6.8 billion" is stated without qualification, presumably for people to assume that's another direct cash injection from its owners...!
-"The US carriers argue they are supportive of open skies given a level playing field, but claim that the dramatic expansion of Gulf airlines into the USA is
siphoning demand away from them, at below-cost fares, and negatively impacting their ability to provide domestic service to their hubs that feed international flights." - all airlines must justify their cost base on a comparison to a US cost base, of course
And...negative impacting domestic service from their hubs? JetBlue must be crying...all the way to the bank... - plus, as I may have mentioned above, do non-US source pax even want to make another domestic hop? I would have thought most visitors to the US on international ULH service wanted to simply terminate at the hub.
As Tim Clark says: ""We are very interested to see how the figure of '$40 billion of government subsidies and benefits' was calculated".
I think that still holds true, from all of us