Originally Posted by
Typhoonpilot
Clearly you don't get out of the States much.
This weekend is Eid in the Muslim world. There are 2000 seat per day on Emirates from Doha to Dubai. They were all full. Early this month when I wanted to go to Hong Kong on days off all the flights were full, couldn't get there on Emirates with 1000 seats per day. Dubai-Bangkok has 1700 seats a day with 4 flights, they are full every day of the year.
There are 6 billion people within a 9 hour flying radius of the Middle East. It's the perfect hub point to take people from Africa to Asia; Europe to Asia; Europe to Africa; South America to Asia; etc.
The people in many of these countries are just now reaching an income level that allows them the luxury of air travel and foreign vacations. In the 80s basically nobody left China to go on vacation nor did many people go there on business, now it's a huge market.
Sorry but North America, with just over 300 million people, is a small market by comparison. Your paranoia is unfounded
Typhoonpilot
Yeah, billions and billions all joining the middle class by fiat. I get it. Maybe there can be hourly service to all those phony ghost cities in China too while we're at it. There is no room for the thousands of growth widebodies they have on order in the long run, but in the meantime, despite their fake little overpopulation gold mine they think they are sitting on, watch how desperately they lobby for cabotage in the so called small soon to be insignificant by comparison piddly little US market.