Bob Crandall is hardly a disinterested party.

I understand your feelings on this, but frankly, I don't need to know the agenda of the OP. I have found the discussion quite interesting, regardless of the agenda of the OP.

However, if the OP's agenda is actually in support of the US3, the OP's arguments have proven incredibly ineffective. By putting forward arguments which seem to be based in emotion rather than logic and failing to respond to the counter-arguments presented, I am quickly becoming convinced that the US3's arguments are without merit. Now, it is possible that this is the OP's real agenda - to build support for the ME3 by failing to provide adequate counter-arguments. If that is the case, the OP is succeeding admirably.

You don't make money initially. I think you'd struggle to find anyone on here that would suggest otherwise. However, like any business you invest, you build the brand, you build market presence. You incorporate MCO into people's itineraries to the JFK, IAD or other destinations, fly into one out of the other. You appeal to the wealthy Indians and Arabs in the region, alongside the middle classes. You tap into the VFR market (into MCO and out of the city closest to where everyone's relatives are found or vice versa). If you're not getting close to making money after the timeframe you initially determine, then you look at alternatives, including axing the route altogether.

Also hows does BA find 80 daily premium class passengers to fly to MCO from LGW? How does TAM find 60 daily premium class passengers to fly to MCO from GRU?\

Oh and lastly, you make a lot of money out of charging for all of the excess baggage your passengers take back home from their US visit. :-) I jest, but I am sure this does earn some cash on the routes to India, as anyone whose ever visited an International arrivals hall in India could attest to.

MCO also has a very good number of business passengers in/out, especially for conventions that get held in Orlando.

Emirates is partnered up with JetBlue, too, so some of the traffic that comes in from Dubai can then transit to other destinations via MCO.

I'd love to see it, since the DOT publishes average fare data by route for domestic travel, but I've never seen them do anything for international travel...

Thank you bringing these questions up. I, as well as everyone else in this thread, are not "Emirates", but I will assume this is a rhetorical "you".

Let us go straight down to it:
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EK intends to make money flying to Orlando by filling up its planes with reasonable fares, and with net margins in the 3%-5% range as acceptable.

A rough cost analysis based on fuel costs for a 777-200LR on DXB-MCO (7724m - 2/3 of its range at max payload), means approximately 75% fuel load, or 36,000 US gals. With a fuel cost of 2 USD, that's 72,000 USD for fuel, and 162,000 USD of fixed costs allocated to the sector: 234,000 USD. EK will be happy with 250kUSD revenue.

With a 8-42-216 configuration, and promotional fares targeted at 5000/3000/1000 USD round-trip, that's promotional revenue of 191,000 USD. A bit shy of the 250k target, but as you know, not all of the seats will be sold at that those prices. At 85% loads, there's a revenue floor of 162.5k - enough to be subsidised by profits on rest of operations whilst a market is being developed.

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Leisure routes do not automatically imply low-yield economy passengers. As noted above, ULH trips by the presumed source markets are the preserve of the locally wealthy, and their attitude is, if we are going to go such a long distance anyway, we are going to go in premium classes. There would be serious loss of face if it were to get out that you had taken your kids for a trip to Disneyland in economy! I, however, do not expect you, OP, to understand the cultural nuance of "face" judging by your cultural background, but do be assured it is a serious, serious motivating factor in purchasing decisions. Irrational, maybe, to Western eyes, but present nonetheless.

As to whether you can find enough passengers - I did mention that only 0.30% of households in the source regions with the wealth to afford premium ULH have to travel yearly to sustain a 80% yield premium cabin on the route via DXB.
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Seattle-Dubai is a much more known quantity. I have taken the following statistic from the DoT data, which has the 6 months to June 2014.

http://www.dot.gov/policy/aviation-p...tistics-report

What it shows it that there were a total of 100,433 passengers, on 117,764 seats. Load factor is 85.3% on average, and ranges from 79.9% in March - when EK increased capacity on the route from 777-200LR to 777-300ER up to 93.6% in June. EK are betting year-on-year passenger number growth mirrors the rest of their experience in the US market, which is at least 10%, and it shows that additional capacity is stimulating extra demand. This bolsters Emirates' case that they are especially applying to their MXP-JFK route that their presence in a particular market increasing competition actually increases the overall market size. This makes additional deployment a good bet - not a sure bet, of course, but it certainly has a plausible business case going for it.

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The DoT does not publish yield data for individual airlines. If you do have verified yield data, please feel free to link us here. Without that information, we can only work on public fare data, approximation of costs and verified load data - which seems to work out for many months of the year.

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Commercially, if I was Emirates, I would be concerned (but not overly so) that my two closest competitors are receiving direct cash injections to support them during expansion. However, I would invest in my product and selling point - network connectivity and a globally competitive product - rather than futilely lobbying my government to try and restrict those carriers from competing, because my owners seem to be happy with my performance, both by returning dividends to them and supporting their aims to bring more people to Dubai. I would say that I am providing a commercially sustainable product that has a better value proposition for literally billions of people than travel providers whose shareholders benefit from protected margins to the exclusion of their customers, who hold to antiquated notions of consumer travel demands and outright arrogance in having a proprietary attitude to market ownership - the idea that a business has a right to certain customers: that is the idea that will not fly, especially in the United States, if it wants to call itself a believer in liberal economics and capitalism.
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OP - I nearly forgot to mention: you wanted some hard data on some ULH routes to the US (from the same link as above).

For LAX-DXB, which added daily A380 service in Jan 2014 we have load factors of:

Jan - 89.8%
Feb - 78.2%
Mar - 84.8%
Apr - 85.4%
May - 92.6%
Jun - 88.2%

So, all the questions about where pax are coming from, or where they are going to aside, it's clear that EK are not having trouble filling these planes. Perhaps it may be wise, in light of independent, verified data, to modify your assumption that no one is flying to or through DXB throughout the year on A380s from the USA?

Tim Clark, far from blustering, seems to be stating a simple observation he has seen in the course of his business.
The load factors back him up.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...fade-conundrum

Incidentally, the numbers are similar across other gateways - even IAH and DFW, at 81.9% and 89.8% respectively, and also carriers (for instance, EK and UA ex-IAD have 77.9% loads, DL ex-ATL has 88.9%).

Incorrect. Flying between SEA and India is slightly shorter going via DXB than going via Asia or Europe; and of course EK serves more places in India with more flights than other airlines.

http://www.gcmap.com/mapui?P=SEA-DXB...EL,SEA-FRA-DEL

Well, sure, if we lived on a spherical planet, you'd be right. :)

Well, our sphere isn't misshapen to the extent that SEA-DXB would involve "massively overflying" India, as the OP claimed above!!!

Well, you are still arguing with him. So, perhaps this is really more like Fillybustering? Talk as much and as long as you can about a nonsubject until your opponent drops dead.

I meant it in a sarcastic way, if what I'm alleging is true then someone must have sat in a room contemplating how they could leverage social media to fuel the media.

The OP opened up this thread with a post packed with inaccuracies and allegations.

If we all said to the OP: yeah, you're spot on. We've all thinking the same. My gut feeling is that we would have had this very thread mentioned in every news report.

I hope this thread continues...

I am EK FF ( just silver) but like the product overall. Why? Because they provide daily service to DXB and then on to many places. If I fly on BA, AF etc I may wait days for first flight...

My gf is CC on ME metal and confirms subsidies exist. But when pinning her down, she offers little argument and nothing that could assist those attacking EK (sorry IAHPHX))!

EK gets some assistance (whether that be high level influence, the best slots etc) but I am sure does not get billions of dollars to quash willy nilly!

I am sorry about the "massive" part: polar flying is pretty new and, until recently, the idea of polar flying to the Middle East would have been beyond anyone's imagination. Right up there with moon launches from the Middle East.

I did run the flight miles from SEA to Dubai and it's longer than the flight miles to Delhi. And then you have to fly back to Delhi. Not usually how ultra long haul works.

Do you mean filibustering? I don't attend rodeos.:D I have no problem keeping the thread alive. It enables people who are willing and able to do more research than I am to bolster my ideas based on common sense and basic geography (something the OP seems to either missed in school or about which the OP is purposely pretending ignorance).