Originally Posted by iahphx

Anything relating to the fuel hedge losses in there?

As previously noted the case against Etihad and Qatar is a slam dunk: they are obviously huge loss-making enterprises propped up by their governments. The only question is how should the US respond to this. Either you say we don't care (cheap flights for everyone!) or you restrict their service in the name of unfair competition.

Emirates is way more difficult to analyze -- especially from the outside -- because the whole company (and perhaps the whole country) is an integrated shell game where you can allocate costs anyway you want to. The fuel hedge situation is perhaps a window into this creative accounting. Without carefully combing through their books -- and we'll see if Emirates lets the US government actually do this -- it's very difficult to tell if they're truly a "for profit" enterprise. I've always maintained that (without looking at the books) the best evidence that they're not a profitable enterprise is that they do things that nobody else in the aviation world could do and not lose tons of money. They fly 60 A380s, and have 80 more on order, operating out of a city of 2 million people. The USA has 320 million people and not a single airline has bought a single A380. Pretty weird, no?