Again, the cheerleaders will come up with more excuses, but look at which 3 destinations from the USA (both int'l and domestic) have had the biggest price drops in the past year:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102401973?__s...doc=102401973#.

It is plain as day that Emirates is dumping capacity into the USA in a way that makes it impossible to actually make money on this flying. They don't care. The USA airlines do. That's why they're going to Washington to stop it.

Hurray for everyone but our US American friend here being an EK cheerleader..

As a consumer, it's OK to be an Emirates cheerleader. After all, you're getting more than you pay for, because somebody is subsidizing your travel. I personally like when I get more than I've paid for.

But to be 100% certain that this isn't actually happening? Well . . . .

So here's a bit more about what seems to be going on. Lee Moak, the former head of ALPA -- the big USA airline pilots union -- seems to have left his job to become chairman of something called "Americans for Fair Skies." This organization is obviously a collaboration between USA airline management and USA airline labor to limit the Middle East airlines' service to the USA.

Moak doesn't pull any punches in an op-ed column that appears in today's Air Transport World:
http://atwonline.com/commentary/op-e...rrier-campaign

How about waiting until you have some evidence rather than just accusations ?

That someone with a vested interest is claiming it is unfair, does not mean that it is

You have yet to actually provide any evidence - continually shouting how someing is not how you think it should work does not mean that is not working

Might also want to cut back on insulting those that do not agree with you

US airlines were cutting service to/from India even before the GCC Big 3 were flying to the US.

If you think that there are few other logical passengers for US-GCC traffic than Indian Sub-continent passengers, then you may benefit by watching the check-in lines at US airports with EK/EY/QR service to try to see where else the "other logical passengers" are headed.

Is Emirates a financial scam?
 

Must be some sort of scam couldn't be the US airlines are rubbish and the vested interests want to protect their own market shares with very untypical big business in the US behaviour : lots of screaming and lobbying to get some form of stealth protectionism in their market, over an above the chapter 11 scam of course. No can't be that. Not those pure capitalists surely.

I have to fly 10x this year JFK-BOM in Y and every single month - even in the busy summer months - Etihad/Jet were the cheapest by far (I got a bit lucky with the Etihad flash sale)

I was a bit sad when Etihad was allowed to buy a stake in Jet. Emirates was already dubbed the national carrier of India. Etihad now gets feed from several small cities of India from Jet and has built its model this way. I have completed 2 of my 10 trips, one on BA and one on EY and regret buying EY tickets.
I personally would take the hassle of heathrow transfer over transiting in AUH at odd hours.

I wish the Indian government could control this.

And when they do stop it, we will all bow down to you. But we won't ever have to do that because nothing that they can do will stop this. You really think that the United States is going to close their open skies rule with the UAE just because US airlines are whining about it? No.
No matter how many (false) accusations you throw about this, I can guarantee you that this won't go anywhere.
I would honestly love to see your input in the next 5-10 years as middle eastern airlines continue to expand into the US and nothing is done, because they are doing what a business does, running and expanding (quite successfully). The whining of the U.S. carriers isn't going to do much if you ask me.

Was this statement made with reference to the investigation report? If yes, I would love it if someone can post the link to the report.

I mean this is getting really interesting.

I don't think anyone here is 100% certain EK is being subsidised - in fact I readily concede it may be in fact that they are, but that is only to the extent that any company, anywhere in the world could be fraudulently concealing their operating performance: EK is not, to me, a special case because of its ownership structure and being from the UAE, because its operations are plausibly profitable, given what we know from independent sources of data.

I think you should stop implicitly lumping EK together with EY and QR - it is, at best, a mistake: all three carriers have different histories and whose owners have different motivations/imperatives. We are talking about EK and Dubai - vastly different in terms of wealth and culture, although you would have to be familiar with the ME as a whole to know this. At worst, it is an intentional obfuscation to paint all 3 as colluding and therefore having ulterior and nefarious motives: we shouldn't be insinuating with no decent evidence...

EY and QR, as other posters have said before, are more questionable as to whether they are subsidised - and I am not familiar with their history and operations enough to comment, only that there are issues such as the long-term interest free loan given to EY that don't exist for EK.

How is this "plain as day" that EK (specifically EK) is dumping capacity - if EK shows that there is demand for their services? It would be a different story if these planes were flying empty, but if they fly nearly full, as the stats from the DoT show, then they can be profitable (barely). The US carriers have to prove predatory pricing to have any headway here, and it is telling that they are not resorting to facts, but PR campaigns and political action committee style lobbying organisations like "Americans for Fair Skies". The sources you cite are all op-ed pieces: aka, opinion pieces opposite the editorial. It's an opinion, published by someone who has an agenda - and his agenda is relatively transparent: protectionism. We must be sceptical until evidence is presented. Why is it difficult to see a case for predatory pricing for EK? Because you can do simple calculations to show that flights are profitable under current loads.

Perhaps one could make an argument that there is a lot of additional capacity if you take all 3 carriers and their seat capacity to "the Middle East", but yields have only dropped around 8-10% on those routes you highlighted in that CNBC article - and they are sourced from a travel deal website. Does it talk about premium yields? The only thing that matters here is the revenue from these planes.

Now, perhaps there is another motivation here, that isn't to do with US airlines being scared of losing market share in their South and East Asia - areas where they have little service anyway.

Perhaps the 3 US airlines who are spearheading this battle fear that American consumers will start to realise that out there in the big wide world, there are carriers who offer, for the same price, a superior hard product, generally helpful staff, better service and modern fleets - and that consumers will start to adjust their purchasing preferences, especially as the legacies start to chip away at their loyalty schemes. Consumers might tend to gravitate towards domestic airlines - where legacies have nice fat and protected margins - which offer a better value proposition (e.g. Virgin America, Southwest, Jetblue): or indeed, they opt for a non-legacy carrier to make their domestic hop to an international gateway.

This in turn creates downward pressure on profits, route cuts (as the legacies have a penchant for "capacity discipline") and perhaps layoffs of pilots. This is why we have ALPA also on board with the campaign. They certainly don't want to see their members being forced out of legacy carriers due to redundancies and "network rationalisation" to find jobs on lower paying airlines with lower unionisation rates.

If this was such as pressing issue for American aviation - why is it only the 3 US legacies and a pilots union involved? Why are JetBlue and FedEx supportive of the current arrangements and silence from Southwest?

I don't doubt the skills of the 3 US legacies: they are doing a great job at directing public opinion and legislative opinion away from various issues: hub captivity of some passengers, awful public opinion of airline customer service and poor product to name a few - and focusing on this rather small part of their business. The timing seems...convenient...what with you know, all the FFP changes this year...

In a way, it reminds me of Comcast and Time Warner etc. fighting their battle against Google Fiber - in the corridors of power, rather than the marketplace. External successful competitor, encroaching on their quasi-monopoly turf, with a vastly superior product...

The US carriers are obviously looking out for themselves, but do you honestly see NOTHING odd about the Gulf airlines buying 3x the number of widebody airplanes as all the USA airlines? Nothing?

And it's not like the USA airlines are hurting for cash now, either.

Folks, this isn't normal. This isn't free market capitalism. There's something very squirrely going on here.

Your "study" seems so far to consist of reading articles and quoting those which back your guesswork. Others here have presented well-argued cases for their viewpoints, but we have no original work of yours to weigh that up against. While it frankly doesn't matter if the ME airlines are being subsidised or not (except maybe to some US airlines who have no idea how to compete - reminds me of the British motorcycle industry many years ago), it would simply provide you with more credibility if you had provided some of your own analysis. To use your own word, that points to something "squirrely" about your "expertise". Until you can eliminate that issue, you won't make much headway.

The aviation market in the US isn't free market capitalism either. If you think it's a free market in our backyard, try to start an airline in the US and do all the operations that the US Big 3 industry cartel kingpins do without getting the US government on your side first. That US play would be a track to US federal prison. ;)

The GCC Big 3 carriers wouldn't be where they are without South Asia/India. The population of India alone is not far from 3x the population of the US. Would 3x the number of widebodies of USA carriers not be the natural direction for the default international carriers for India?

In the tone of Jack Donaghy's voice, quite the opposite. This is the very essence of capitalism where the big gets bigger and government has no say, and it's very American.