IT'S NOT FOR AMERICANS TRAVELING THE THE MIDDLE EAST!!!

EK IT NOT AIMING AT O/D CUSTOMERS!!!

How many times do you need to be told before you understand?

Oh, and quite a few American do fly to the Middle East... You see lots of "big guys" heading out to the hot-spots of the world.

Specifically, 8.8 million people a year fly to the ME from the USA, according to the US Government! 65 million to Europe - so 7.38x, not 25 times the demand...! Of course, out of those pax, how many are connecting onwards, we don't know...not so relevant to the discussion about load factors though.

From what I can see, the OP is starting with the axiom that Emirates is commiting some scam and so eveything else has to support this. Any contra-arguments must be flawed since they fail to meet the axiomatic requirements

Just need to accept that the US airlines are the epitome of well run airlines ( I did try to write that sentence without laughing )

:D

This thread is turning into one of those Family Guy cutaway gags.

It's very relevant. Ask any airline executive in the world what their yield is for nonstop pax vs. connecting pax. Almost everyone will pay substantially more to fly nonstop. That is why, with the exception of these Middle East carriers, successful hubs are always in cities with tons of O/D traffic.

With regard to USA/Middle East flights, it's also relevant that the Middle East is out-of-the-way for almost every int'l itinerary.

You're having fun of trolling us here, aren't you?

First of all, many airline's operate of a mix of transit and O/D traffic. In fact, most airlines in the world do so. Or do you think that Singapore, Bangkok or Istanbul generate enough O/D for airlines the size of SQ, TG or TK? And even most European airlines are heavily into transit passengers.

Second, Middle East "out of the way"? Are you thinking the world is flat, by any chance?

It's in the middle of 80%+ of worlds population (Europe, Africa, Asia), perfectly located to connect almost every important business area in the world with each other, only Europe-South/North America is a detour. That's why EK eventually will run some European small-hub bases, just as SQ and others do (in BCN)

But besides some American routes (which are indeed subsidized as a single route at the moment - no one is denying that), EK is running very profitable after all. And financing some small lose-making operations when the overall picture is very good is something many companies are doing, as they might eventually make sense too. And it's easy to build up your brand that way.

I can only add to the posters before: If you're really working for any consultant firm, please let us know which one, so I can stay FAR away from it.

There's lots of hints in his(?) posts in the thread that the World means Honolulu in the West to Boston in the East and Anchorage in the North to Miami in the South.

I'm not trolling. I'm telling you things you don't want to hear. You have an airline that is supposedly successful using a strategy that has not been successful by any other airline in the world -- indeed it would be a recipe for immediate bankruptcy.

Just look at the news today: the future of the A380 program is in jeopardy because no other airline in the world wants the planes. This isn't exactly surprising; it was predicted by airline analysts forever because there are fundamental principles of airline economics just like there are fundamental principles of physics. Yet, the plane supposedly works in Dubai, carrying mostly connecting pax -- which is generally another sure recipe for airline financial disaster.

Now you can blab about how Emirates business model is different. Maybe it is. But now they're flying these planes to the USA and there's not a snowball's chance in hell that those routes could be profitable. They are completely illogical. Which makes me wonder how an airline that uses a business model that doesn't work for anyone else in the world and is now doing something completely ridiculous "makes money." Maybe they do. But I think skepticism is in order.

You refuse to reply to those that provide actual calculations and go on and on about why you're right without providing any calculations of your own to back those claims up.

It's possible it's not your intention but your behaviour in this thread is tantamount to trolling

It's not just one person "blabbing"; it's closer to 50, and the majority of us don't give a rat's behind about whether or not EK succeeds from a financial perspective.

That having been said, as long as you continue to stir the pot, you can expect that others will continue to put your assertions (e.g. US based carriers are role models in spite of that fact that ALL have received considerable subsidies from the US government) on the spot as they arise. Instead of responding to these, in isolation, you continue to restate your original idea ad nauseam. This, in and of itself, makes your claim of being an "analyst" appear completely absurd.

Given that there is nothing to support it other than "I say so , I am right" and ignoring any responses that disagree and looking at wikipedia page ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet) ) and the nature of arguments, seems pretty much spot on

The data about USA-Middle East (as a whole traffic), which is the DoT figure of 8.8 million refers to is not really relevant to your question about Emirates and its business model because it's very difficult to pull out of that figure which proportion of that 8.8 million is EK traffic from DXB. The Middle East is home to many carriers that provide service to the USA. For instance, we have QR (Qatar), EY (Abu Dhabi), RJ (Jordan), SV (KSA), KU (Kuwait), not to mention UA and DL. You could also say that the ex-UAE numbers are also specifically mentioned, but I don't want to mix in EY and other carrier traffic. If you really want, you can pull out all the EK services in the raw monthly data from the DoT, but there is another option:

Luckily, the DoT provides us more detailed figures with regards to DXB. To reiterate what I said in a previous post (number 298), DXB is the 17th busiest gateway to the USA with, in the year ending June 2014: 2,386,804 pax, of which 13.8% travel on US carriers, and 86.2% on Foreign carriers. The load factor stated is 84.5%, but let's hold off on bringing that into our calculations.

We have:
329,379 pax travelling on US carriers USA-DXB and
2,057,425 pax travelling on Foreign carriers.

Let's look at which carriers operate ex-DXB to the US:
US carriers: DL (to ATL) and UA (to IAD)
Foreign carriers: EK

This conveniently makes our figures rather easy if we want to analyse EK, because we can obviously attribute all 2,057,425 pax to EK metal. We also know that the only other originating point for USA pax on EK is MXP, which would be included in statistics where pax originate at MXP in the DoT stats, so not relevant here.

2 million pax equates to 5480 seats a day, 2740 each way - the total capacity of an A380 is 489 seats, so 5.6 A380s a day.

Aha, you say, what about loads: EK could be losing loads of money if the loads aren't high enough (as we demonstrated a few pages ago) Now, if we say load factors of 84.3% - that means that EK needs to send 2,372,479 seats a year to and from the USA - 6500 seats a day or, 3250 each way, so 6.64 A380s. Now, EK has 9 USA destinations - SEA, SFO, LAX, ORD, DFW, IAH, IAD, JFK and BOS.

At the time the June report was released, EK was serving those routes with, respectively, 77W, 77W, 77W, (not served), 77W, 77W, 77W, 2x388 and 77W, 77L (route started March 14), if I am not mistaken - someone can come and correct me - the 77Ws have a capacity of (8+42+310)=360. However, we can disregard BOS for the purposes of our calculations as it's a new route with only 90 days historical performance - you're unlikely to have 100% for 3 months straight away. Hence, we can say that EK deployed a daily capacity of 3498 (360*7+489*2). That works out at just about 78.3% load, which is just on the border of breakeven, according to our worst case scenarios in the calculations in this thread. Now with fuel costs changed and the additional of cargo revenue - which in the DoT report says the ME is the fastest growing freight gateway, you can see how these routes become profitable. We have already covered the point about yields with specific examples related to EKs pricing, so there is no need to elaborate about yields between transit and O/D pax - we're using actual public information for all of these calculations.

Why the up gauge to the A380 though, if the pax loads are sitting around breakeven? If you are a route planner and you look at the historical trends, you would notice that year-on-year growth on the DXB-USA routes is, for 2013-14, 20.6%. In the year ending June 13, the year-on-year growth 2012-13 was 14.1% with LF of 84.7%. In 2011-12, it was 18.4% with LF of 81.2%. You get the picture. With a 15% y-o-y growth from this year, you're looking at 3151 seats a day, 20% growth, 3288 - and these are only from 7 cities. We haven't even factored in ORD and BOS. Stripping out JFK and its 750,000 pax, and you've got 1.2m seats to supply at current levels: 1643/day. At current load factors you'll need 1950 seats to supply. Extrapolate growth and you've got between 1800-1900 seats a day demand, which is supplied with 2135-2250 seats amongst non-JFK/ORD/BOS destinations. Going from 6x77W to 4x77W and 2x388 and you go from 2160 to 2418 seats a day. So yes, this may depress load factors, but EK are betting on strong demand growth - and can rely on freight revenue and not fuelling to the max. And now Jet-A is, as of this post, 1.9701USD in Dec futures, rising to 2.17USD out to late-2017 settlement dates - well, I think you could argue that reduces the breakeven load factor. In short - A380 capacity increases are in line with projected growth numbers for DXB-USA traffic (based on historical data, and in EKs internal data, presumably), whilst keeping load factors around breakeven/profitable on average.

As many have conceded in this thread, other carriers in the region (e.g. EY and QR) are believed to be "scams" in the sense they are propped up by owner support, either through debt that requires no repayment or direct fiscal transfer - and evidence is provided for this. e.g. EYs interest free until 2027 loan of 3 billion USD. However you have specifically focused on EK, where many posters contend that it is actually a sustainable, commercially run and profitable enterprise.

Name 3, that is, 3 airline executives who said so. 3 airlines that are extremely successful as you say, and 3 successful 'hubs' (whatever that means) with tonnes of O/D traffic.