ft101

I know from previous threads that you're well aware that isn't the case for EK. Why do you persist with the lies?

iahphx

You can obviously believe any fantasy you want. The fact that no other airline in the world can make money on the A380 yet Emirates magically "does" with more than 100 of them -- despite having a small local market and insane levels of subsidized competition from neighboring small Mideast nations -- might suggest your fantasies are very vivid.

wxman22

This has nothing to do with aviation markets, Norwegian Air or any other business decision.
This is just New York State politics. Nothing more , nothing less.

ft101

The facts are that you were given data that proved you wrong so chased around in circles for a while before going quiet. EK also have by far the biggest fleet of B777s of any airline (and more of them than they have A380s) which you conveniently fail to mention.

iahphx

I might suggest that the fact that the government-owned airline of a small autocratic Middle Eastern nation also has the biggest fleet of 777s supports my assertion that they are heavily subsidized. But, as I said, you can believe any fantasy you want. It doesn't have much to do with Norwegian. As I said, Norwegian will eventually go out of business if they are unprofitable. Emirates does not have this financial constraint.

irishguy28

Why?

You have not given the faintest scintilla of support, and your conclusions and conjectures are easily disproven.

Atlanta airport records 105 million passengers, which is well over double the city's official number of visitors. Of the 50 million visitors to Atlanta, 40% originate elsewhere in Georgia - that's 20 million visitors from within the state - and only 1.2 million come from overseas. It is clear that the vast majority of passengers at Hartsfield-Jackson are merely changing planes there to get somewhere else.

Does this make Delta a heavily-subsidised, autocratic airline? The airport is catering to far too many people than its location demands. By your own argument, this means it it must be subsidised.

70% of all of KLM's passengers change planes at Schiphol - and therefore don't visit Amsterdam, let alone the Netherlands. In 2016 Amsterdam Airport Schiphol handled 77 passengers for each resident of the city mentioned in its title; it handled almost 4 times as many passengers as there are residents of the country in which it is located.

Does this make KLM a heavily-subsidised, autocratic airline?

What about SQ at SIN?

That your argument regarding Emirates requires either a large home market, or a very busy destination at the hub, in order to sustain service, falls down in that this model is not common in the airline industry; the model you state is "broken" for Emirates is one pursued all around the world, including in the US. But you either already know this, or are not as familiar with air transport as you claim. Emirates and Dubai are NOT the first airline/airport to thrive on the transfer model. Yet they are among the most successful, together with IST/TK and DOH/QR, whose geographical location give them the edge in connecting intercontinental traffic.

ft101

Your thoughts do not stand up to the facts and data supplied to you way back when the US big three started to cry. Go back and read the thread on the EK forum again if you have to, but you had no facts to back you up then, and two and a half years down the line you still don't.

iahphx

The definition of "facts" is always interesting for Middle Eastern airline supporters. Obviously, the EU has no "facts." The Canadians have no facts. The new findings by the US DOT must be "wrong." Rather, these airlines have reinvented the world of economics, and due to some unspecified mysterious business acumen, they can make money doing things that all the other airlines of the world can't.

Sigh.

I don't understand why, as a consumer, you can't just take advantage of the ridiculous opportunities offered by the Middle East airlines but understand that they are not market-driven. The real world is a fine place to live.

irishguy28

It's not at all mysterious.

They are simply doing what the likes of KLM and Singapore Airlines pioneered. Offering simple, one-stop, easy connections to a network of destinations that never previously had such simple connections available. And, like AMS and SIN, the Middle Eastern airlines make connections simple. None of this forcing transfer customers to undergo immigration and customs checks, as the US insists for all (except for some Air New Zealand customers).

ft101

This is deja vu from over two years ago - no facts or data from the anti EK side, but if they keep repeating themself over and over then maybe someone will believe them.

oliver2002

DY and D8 are clearly running the new 737 MAX8 routes to the US in the hope of getting a substantial share of a secondary market. I'm sure its not just a hope, but they surely did some research to get the cash from their investors to buy/lease all those new aircraft.

iahphx

Well, I wouldn't assume those investors were too bright. Have you been following the performance of Norwegian's stock the past year? Suddenly, their shareholders are having that Captain Obvious moment when they realize that they were clueless about how bad Norwegian's business model is. This doesn't surprise me: in 2 decades of following the stock market performance of the US airlines, I've seen many instances of absolutely clueless investor behavior. In this case, the level of investor sophistication seemed to be "hey if Ryanair can make money being low cost, so can Norwegian." Obviously, it isn't that simple. Anyone who knew the industry would know why Norwegian's gamble is so incredibly risky (which is why the established low cost airlines passed on this idea).

https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/NAS:NO

irishguy28

You seem to be unaware that the likes of WOW, Icelandair and Westjet are also "making money by being low cost" across the Atlantic. IAG have set up a new airline, Level, based on this model; established flag carriers such as TAP, and Aer Lingus and Lufthansa (from some markets) are moving towards the "unbundled" LCC model for TATL flights.

JetBlue may become the first US airline to get in on the action - it's not really a surprise that an innovative upstart, rather than one of the established players, would be the first to move in this sphere.

oliver2002

I doubt the original shareholders are financing the expansion... NAS has/had to go to the banks for that.

iahphx

There are many different "low fare" airline models. JetBlue's is remarkably different from Norwegian. JetBlue may indeed start serving Europe from Boston in the next couple of years, if they can make the math work. They'd have a real chance of success, because they have a solid biz class product, Mint, that could actually help pay the bills across the Atlantic. Norwegian has nothing other than a wing and a prayer.