Don't really see United benefitting from this agreement with Emirates. JFK is just a few miles away from Newark and it would be a no-brainer to be on the A380 instead. Unless someone wants to earn UA miles on their EK booking, or enjoy the Polaris, I don't think anyone would be willing to connect between two airlines in DXB, and would much rather be willing to be on an EK-metal (given the better soft product on EK) through their entire journey. The AA-QR partnership is well designed and established, and EK-UA will be struggling to be able to work this out on a long term if it were to continue on an extremely limited partnership and reciprocal benefits like this.
+ if this is all the hype was all about, then please take me back to the good old EK-B6 days, thanks.