Just as an aside, Delta will stop flying to Mumbai this week.

Their JFK-AMS-BOM ends on 28 March; from then on, the flight will terminate in AMS.

http://airlineroute.net/2014/11/25/dl-amsbom-s15update/

And the plurality -- perhaps even the majority -- of the SEA-India traffic is not aiming for DEL or BOM as final destination/origin. Keep in mind that most of India's best IT minds are from a variety of cities in South India that are served by EK but not by any US airlines. EK is in many ways India's national airline, for it serves more Indian cities with international flights than Air India serves in India. Welcome to the fruits of EK having built itself up in a rational, economical way, that being transporting Indians to/from the Gulf and later the rest of the world; and then copying that for other countries with sizeable Gulf labor force participation too.

People from (or with ties to) relatively poor countries have money to travel too. When it comes to the US, persons of Indian origin in the US tend to be far wealthier than the average American subset with a US passport. There is a graphic in the following that shows this when it comes to Indians: http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/asian...phics/indians/

You take for granted a lot of misconceptions. As for it not being a worthwhile service, not sure if you're following but EK have a great F product that they sell at a steep premium (even out of India). And have you seen those F fares ex-US? People are dropping 30 large on these seats with EK.

DEL-HKG-SEA is more flying than through DXB. Not to mention, no other non-Indian airline covers India like EK do.

http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=del-sea...a&MS=wls&DU=mi
http://goo.gl/KuDRlv

I had thought about doing the same exercise with Hyderabad, Bangalore, and Chennai, but hadn't gotten round to it. I suspect with the two-stop connections that these cities would require with most other carriers that EK would have an even greater time advantage than with Mumbai or Delhi. I;ll check it out and post the results.

Folks, you're talking gibberish. Yes, there is SOME leisure demand for Orlando in Europe. Mostly the UK, because the Brits are particularly fond of Florida and the Mouse. But Dubai? India? You need a daily flight with more than 50 premium seats?

Look, you can continue to live in this fantasy world where Emirates makes money doing insane things that no other airline (outside the Middle East) would ever even momentarily consider. Or you could return to reality. It doesn't matter to me. All I will tell you is that this nonsense is creating a great record for the US airlines' case in Washington. It's kind of a shame in a way, because it would be interesting to watch how ludicrous this could get.

You might want to check out the Innovator's Dilemma. It's a bit dated (e.g. written prior to when Apple first turned the cell phone industry upside down... and companies like Samsung and Xiaomi subsequently undercut them in order to attack the bottom of the pyramid), but the basic principles are timeless and are just as applicable to business models as they are technologies.

Disney may well be a cheap vacation for families living in Texas or even England, but the people I know who fly halfway around the world to visit don't skimp on anything.

Unless they can come up with proof that EK has accepted subsidies, their case will continue to be hollow.

At this point, no one knows whether DXB-MCO will make money or not. You may think you do, but you don't because no one is flying it yet. Emirates thinks they can. Maybe they will be wrong. Delta obviously thinks they were wrong flying JFK-BOM since they are canceling the flight. Airlines make mistakes. Perhaps this big expansion by EK will fail. However, that does not mean that EK is being subsidized. Perhaps some of these new flights will work, perhaps some won't. However, you can't make a case that they are being subsidized now because of flights they plan in the future.

Not sure if this has been raised or not. The OP could well be right in that some of the routes between DXB and the USA are subsidised ( for now any way). But that could simply mean that the routes are subsidised by other parts of the Emirates operations. EK have plenty of other routes - in fact over 3,500 flights a day. These questionable US flights (excluding JFK, BOS & IAD from that list - which are surely is sensible by any yardstick), amount to how many of those flights?

I am sure most airlines do sustain loss making routes, at least in the short term, to build market share on a route/network feeding that route. I have been watching flights between Australia and Asia/Europe for over a decade, and Singapore and Europe for over 6 years now. Emirates used to be the cheapest in many instances. Now (and even well before the JV with QF) they are priced at sometimes small, and sometimes much larger premiums above the competition (except where competition offer a non-stop service) in both classes. It is rare that EK are the cheapest.

I would also hypothesise that Emirates would know a lot more about the market for travellers to the US from India/Saudi Arabia/Pakistan and the middle east in general, than many armchair analysts.

SW Florida and Central Florida have a rather substantial population of people with kinship connections in areas served by EK metal but not by US airlines' metal. I suggest looking at the ethnic and related demographic factors of the catchment area. EK's strategy has been to build itself upon serving the traffic needs of people headed to/from LDCs. It worked for oil-poor Dubai's EK while we know what has come of oil-richer Kuwait's Kuwait Airways and of Gulf Air. EK seems to have been smarter than the rest and was wise or lucky in riding on the coat tails of labor migration flows to/from LDCs where others failed or prejudicially scoffed at it.

Good point. There is the old saying: You have to spend money to make money. At this point, EK is quite possibly in the 'spend money mode' on some of these flights. It does help that EK does not have to respond to the insatiable demands to maximize profits today that US airlines do to maintain their share price. The fact that they are solely owned means their business strategy can be longer term. They can accept lower profits today for increased market share and larger profits tomorrow. I would expect that some of these flights won't pan out in the long term and others will. I do agree that they are likely to have a much greater understanding of the Indian market than US carriers and quite possibly European carriers as well, so they have a decent chance at success. It is important to recognize, though, that having a long-term strategy based on an ownership that will tolerate lower profits short-term is not the same as subsidy.

Frankly, I am finding the whole campaign by the US3 rather distasteful at this point. I don't know about the rest of the US but there is a big ad campaign going on in the Washington area right now on both radio and television being sponsored by the US3 that suggests that EK is being subsidized. To me, it is starting to smack of desperation on their part.

The point raised about using parts of the network to cover potential Americas routes losses was indeed raised in many, many previous posts (I totally understand if you haven't read all 72 pages of this thread though!).

If you take a look at page 20/21:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/emira...l-scam-21.html

a brief analysis of pax numbers into the US from DXB with year on year growth of over 10%, supports the case for additional capacity expansion without much yield depression.

The MCO route also aligns well with their US ally, JetBlue who operate a hub at MCO - for all those who have to make a one stop connection to an international gateway, seamless transfer on B6/EK is now possible from additional catchment areas (specifically the Caribbean). Combine that with global marketing and there may be some demand on the MCO service.

In any case, we will (as other posters have said) not be able to judge the viability of a new route for a few months until DoT data is published. However, Orlando local officials seem to understand the point - which is that ULH visitors to the region (ok, I'll say it, to Disney) are, as they already wealthy enough to afford ULH travel, combined with the general wealth distribution dynamic in Asia EK source markets (that is, more unequal than Europe/US - the people with money really do have money and like to spend it), means they just go all out and go full premium on air and ground services. And shall we say, the US3 carriers don't have a reputation for "premium". AA_EXP09 in post 1030 gives a very succinct illumination into the new global wealth/demographic flows that EK taps into, which other carriers (either by marketing themselves into a corner, or by geographical disadvantage or both) have difficulty in doing.

OP, in 1070 and the previous posts about MCO, I note you have difficulty believing that EK can fill 50 premium seats daily out of MCO. If we take EK average load factors out of the US from DoT stats at 85%, let us say that EK needs to fill 42 of those seats daily (and 183 Y seats).

I'm going to use a demographic argument to illustrate the feasibility that it could happen here, since this is a new route - that is, a hypothetical and reasonable business case that you could make to argue for route deployment, if you were say, VP of Americas sales at EK pitching to the bosses.

Looking at potential source markets in Florida only - the people with money enough to buy premium are in the upper middle class or above - that's 5% of the population. Florida's population is 19.89 million, so that's about 1 million potential pax. Not so much, but ok. But let's look at EK's source markets of Asia. We've got 1 billion in China, 1 billion in India, 500 million in SE Asia. Let's say only 0.1% of that population will have the money for premium ULH travel. Turns out that is 2.5 million. Add to that the fact that the passenger profile for leisure is going to be families - each household that travels will most likely buy 4 tickets, so you only need 10 households a day. There are 590 million households in EKs primary source market for the US - 0.1% of them are 590k.

Now, EK has 97000 seats a year, of which 18250 are premium - or let's say 1800 households worth a year. Considering there are 590,000 available households with the cash to drop on premium ULH, EK needs to get 0.30% of that market pool. Of course I am restricting the households to only the top 0.1%, but the 1% is probably a better indicator of cash levels what with a rising number of middle class Asians who have the cash to spend on one dream holiday for the kids - American cultural power is impressive - so, add that into the mix, along with diaspora VFR travel in Y, and I think you have a compelling case for commencing service. Of course if demand fails to materialise, you can drop the route - as I have said before in many posts, EK doesn't open US routes with A380s, it opens them with 200LRs to test the water, and then if demand warrants it, upgauges to 300ER then 380 as needed.

I doubt they will have trouble filling the plane at decent yields though. Of course the demand is not evenly distributed across the year, but do remember that the seasonality of route is no longer defined by Western cultural norms (e.g. Christmas, Easter/Spring, Thanksgiving, School schedules) - as a more global airline, its source passengers do have varying holiday profiles which can smooth the demand out a little bit.

For instance, I am in SE Asia at the moment - April is generally a soft month for BKK travel (inbound and outbound), yet I am finding EK is solidly booked (overbooked in fact) throughout the Thai New Year period - both on Asia-DXB and DXB-Europe, whereas only 3-4 years ago, this time of year was quite empty.

This whole thread (all 72 pages of it) can be summarised as follows:

"The OP is of the opinion that anything that is NOT done by a US airline is by definition impossible (economically speaking). and no facts or arguments presented can move him from that (somewhat arrogant) position."

This 'not invented here' syndrome of course occurs in other cultures as well, but - in my observation - it is particularly strong in some subsets of the population of some countries.

It has been sort of fun following this, but the repetitiveness of it moves me to 'unsubscribing' from this thread.

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