Have you even thought about what that actually means?

The "all eggs in one basket" analogy is to warn you that, should the basket get dropped or stolen, ALL of your eggs get broken or taken - leaving you with nothing.

The analogy might make sense when you're talking of an investor who puts ALL of their money into the one investment/area (say, the US3, like our OP!).

But what does this reporter whom you seem to admire mean when they say that a one-hub strategy is "putting all eggs in one basket"? What is the threat that looms over hub airports, meaning that it is wiser to have a multi-hub strategy? When has a hub airport ever been lost/stolen/suddenly made unusable? If a single-hub strategy is so alien and complex and problematic, why does practically every major European airline (Lufthansa being the main exception) pursue a single-hub strategy? Have they cast similar aspersions on British Airways, Singapore Airlines, Air France, etc?

But anyway: to take a cliché, repurpose it in the style of your journalist, and make a similarly pithy, meaningless statement: one could argue that, with their multi-hub strategy, most American carriers are "spreading themselves too thinly".

How many more idiotic, random, and clearly uninformed allegations and slurs can they make? (or maybe your journalist is just agitating for Emirates to open a North American hub. Emirates does, indeed, want to operate round-the-world flights so an NA hub would make sense in achieving this goal).

Journalists are paid to fill column inches on a daily basis. They are often advancing an agenda that suits them, their owner, their sponsors, or their advertisers. You should learn to be more critical when reading opinions masquerading as fact.

Emirates Group posts Dh5.5bn annual profit, 2nd highest in its history


The Emirates Group posted Dh5.5 billion ($1.5 billion) profit, up 34 per cent from last year. The Group’s revenue reached Dh96.5 billion ($26.3 billion), an increase of 10 per cent over last year’s results, and the Group’s cash balance remained strong, growing to Dh20 billion ($5.5 billion).

The strong rise of the US dollar against currencies in many of Emirates’ and dnata’s key markets had an Dh1.5 billion ($412 million) impact to the Group’s bottom line, while the 80-day disruption at DXB had an estimated impact of Dh1.7 billion ($467 million) on Group revenue.

In 2014-15, Emirates increased capacity by four billion Available Tonne Kilometres (ATKMs). For the first time in the airline’s history, Emirates’ total passenger and cargo capacity crossed the 50 billion mark, to 50.8 billion ATKMs at the end of the financial year, cementing its position as the world’s largest international airline.

Carrying a record 49.3 million passengers, up 11 per cent from last year, Emirates managed to achieve a Passenger Seat Factor of 79.6 per cent, an improvement compared with last year’s results (79.4 per cent) in spite of a 9 per cent increase in seat capacity by Available Seat Kilometres (ASKMs). This highlights the strong consumer desire to fly on Emirates’ state-of-the-art aircraft, and via efficient routings through its Dubai hub.

Under pressure from the weakening of all major currencies against the USD, passenger yield dropped to 29.7 fils (8.1 US cents) per Revenue Passenger Kilometre (RPKM).

The financing highlight of the year was the successful issuance of a UK Export Finance (UKEF) guaranteed Sukuk bond of Dh3.4 billion ($913 million) to fund the acquisition of four A380 aircraft to be delivered in 2015. This deal marked the world’s first Sukuk financing supported by UKEF and the largest ever capital markets offering in the aviation space with an Export Credit Agency guarantee.
These deals align with Emirates’ strategy to seek diverse financing sources, and underscore its sound financials and the strong investor confidence in the airline’s business model. Emirates closed the financial year with a healthy Dh13.3 billion ($3.6 billion) cash flow from operating activities.
In its 56 years of operation, 2014-15 has been Dnata’s most profitable yet, building on its strong results in the previous year. Dnata's revenue grew to Dh10.3 billion ($2.8 billion), crossing Dh10 billion for the first time. Dnata’s international business now accounts for more than 60 per cent of its revenue.

Great news! I love Emirates.

In 2008, DL merged with NW and reduced capacity at CVG by 22% in 2008 and a further 17% in 2009.

In 2010, US Airways occupied 85 out of 98 gates at Charlotte/Douglas, NC, and accounted for about 90% of traffic - making Charllotte a "Fortress Hub", an airport where over 2/3rds of business is reliant on one carrier.

Can be risky for airport operator if an airline client suddenly merges or is acquired.

I'm not sure what relevance that has to the topic (if anything, it shows that having too many hubs is a bad thing) - if Emirates decides to downgrade/close their DXB operation, then that means they are putting themselves out of business. (If they merely transfer to a new "hub", they are still stuck with the same, dangerous "single hub" strategy - at least, that clever journalist thinks it is a dangerous strategy - it's just that they have moved their "flawed" strategy to operate at a new location).

And in your example, it was the airline(s) in question that made all those decisions themselves - it was not some outside calamity befalling the airline, and revealing their "single-hub" strategy to be inherently flawed.

And the journalist was not talking about the risks to the airport/airport operator - but the risks to the airline. The risks of an airport being overly, or totally, reliant on one customer are well known, but not the issue here. The "risks" to an airline in operating only a single hub exist only in the mind of that journalist.

The risk is only to airport operator in my opinion, not airline...

Agreed!

Is this still going on?

I have lost track of where we are but I thought I'd throw a couple of things out there.

Emirates, like EY and QR, is owned by the ICD which as we all know is government funded. Any bailouts that any of the ME3 have received has generally been through their parent investment company or loans from the state which isn't unfamiliar in the US, EU or Asia.

State subsidies don't come into it, while it could be claimed that state backed loans are subsidies due to their low interest rates, it don't fit the bill as the loans were or are being paid back whereas a subsidy isn't paid back.

Also the way the ME3 make money is through being a feeder airline, they have hubs at DXB, AUH and DOH linking many countries together. The reason it works for the ME3 is because the ME is ideally placed for such operations.

Does all of this hurt the US airlines? Yes and largely because the US airlines are .... along with many EU airlines, the only airlines worth flying if you want a fantastic experience are Asian or Middle Eastern just like some of the best hotel brands are Asian or Middle Eastern.

Now I could be wrong with some of the above and some is opinion rather than fact so don't shoot me please :)

Without getting into how through this entire thread, the OP has been inconsistent, contradictory and basing their argument on pure speculation, I'd like to point out here that there isn't just ONE airport in India.

American businesses are working in BOM, DEL, HYD, BLR amongst others. So clearly, sending direct flights to all these destinations is not the brightest idea. Emirates brings passengers to DXB, then send them to 30-odd destinations in the sub-continent (and beyond)-- exactly what domestic US carriers do in America.

Several American firms based here in NY use EK as their preferred carrier to India.

p.s. The oldest non-stop between the US and India (UA's flights to BOM and DEL) are still running, I think. The only flight cancelled in recent memory is Delta's one stop to BOM via AMS.

The 2014-15 annual report is now available:
http://www.theemiratesgroup.com/engl...al-report.aspx

Some highlights, if you don't believe it to be a load of lies beforehand:

- lots of mentions about EKs economic impact, both in Dubai, the wider UAE, EU and US, especially in the Ruler's foreword. Interestingly, a figure of 14.6bn AED dividends to the government to date was quoted by Sheikh Mohammed, who states that the dividends go towards infrastructure projects such as Dubai World Central and Dubai Airport expansion. Who's subsidising who here!! In 2013, economic impact of aviation in general (not just EK) was worth 26.7 billion USD to Dubai GDP. Given the 13% tax take, that's only 3bn USD cash from aviation the government can take in revenue

- Far be it from EKs marketing machine heralding great record success in 2014-15, operating margin was 6.6% and net margin was 5.1% for the year for the airline. dnata had fatter margins, at 8.8% net. Given profitable legacy carriers around the world such as IAG and the US3 are making double or triple EKs margins, I think we can safely say that the low-margin, but acceptable to owner hypothesis seems to have substance.

- (for the airline) 5,893m AED operating profit on 88,819m AED revenue. Net debt, including future operating lease rental payments to equity ratio increased to 212.1% (!)

- pax load factor of 79.6%, cargo over 2.3bn tonnes. net new planes into the fleet: 14 (24 new, 10 retired)

- 18.7bn AED in new financing in 2014-15, subscriptions for the 913m USD UK-government (UK Export Finance) backed Sukuk to pre-fund 4x A380 acquisitions was oversubscribed by 3.2 times. Seems there's some institutional demand for dollar denominated hard assets?

- yields dropped from 30.4 fils per RPKM to 29.7 RPKM, but seat factor up slightly from 79.4 to 79.6%. Overall increase in passenger revenue, but I think the results are helped much more by lower fuel costs. Premium seat factor up by 1.3%. Economy still at 82.4%.

- total fuel costs down by 7% despite 10% in fuel uplift. EK had an average 15% reduction in fuel price - fuel bill down from 30.6bn AED to 28.6bn AED. ex-fuel unit costs up 5%, but total unit costs down 2.5% (158 fils from 162 fils from ATKM).

- cash from operations 13.3bn AED - 3.62bn USD. Just over half of that went to financial lease obligations. EK took on an additional 5bn AED in debt in the year (15 financial leases+loan refinancing).

- the owners took 48% in net profits in dividends this year - which is most likely why Dubai's government has managed to publish a budget surplus of 900m USD this year - given EK has given them around 600-700m :D

So, it looks like the competition is starting to depress EK yields (easy days of growth is over), but fuel costs save the company this year showing better results. Cash flow still positive, with enough to add to reserves and pay dividends. Debt increases but is mainly secured on a non-recourse basis (we assume given similar deals) on the aircraft, rather than across the whole group. Headwinds in the future for EK, certainly, with capacity outpacing yield. It remains to be seen whether new product and marketing can boost yields in the next couple of years, or whether the capacity increases need to be curtailed. None of this still implies scam though :D

In fact, per the OP's the-world-revolves-around-me logic, there is no money to be made flying to India cause the US carriers don't have more non-stops to (30 or so) Indian destinations.

Again, if their was adequate demand for premium service from the USA to India, the USA airlines would be lining up to provide it. The 787, for example, would be a fantastic option to ferry USA biz traffic to India.

The fact that NOBODY is considering it -- indeed, Delta is pulling out of the market -- tells anyone that there's no money to be made doing this. Undoubtedly because the ME3 are pricing at a level that makes it uneconomical.

I'll wait for the "forensic analysis" of these earnings. Remember, outside the USA, airline profitability isn't very good. Compare this sunshine and roses report to Singapore's earnings:

http://centreforaviation.com/analysi...economy-208677

So if you want to believe you can have modest load factor, huge capacity increases, intense local competition, low density airplane configurations, high expenses from providing an enhanced on-board product and rapid expansion to markets where your competitors see no demand -- well, you've got either a fairy tale or the best businessmen in the world.

:D

You're just an amusing side show now.

Is the inability to listen and comprehend mandatory for "aviation experts"?

Edit - the first paragraph of the link you posted :-

Given the plunge in foreign currencies, that would seem like an extremely small drop. The USA airlines -- where most tickets are sold in dollars -- have reported a similar yield decline attributed to currency. Couple the fact that we know that airfares to Dubai are in freefall ( see http://www.thenational.ae/business/a...ngs-down-fares) and we have rather interesting results.

These results also would indicate that Emirates sees no revenue pressures from all the extra Middle East seats -- just some modest currency pressures.

It is a shame that there's no conference call with real airline analysts.