No question that QR and EY receive significant support from their respective government, EK less so.
That said, there are some slightly arrogant and ignorant assumptions in the majority of talk on this subject. "We have the biggest travel market in the world and therefore deserve to remain the biggest carriers". Well, not anymore you don't. Look at these charts to see some interesting statistics:
World's busiest passenger air routes - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Anyone with a modicum of intelligence will be able to see that world travel trends are changing, and not in favor of the U.S. or European legacy airlines.
There are only 1 billion people in all of the Americas and only 1 billion people in all of Europe (including eastern Europe). There are 4 billion in Asia and 1 billion in Africa. Asia is going to add another 1 billion and Africa is likely to add another 2 billion by 2100. This while the population in Europe and the Americas is likely to decline.
So where is the growth and who is positioned to benefit from it?
A little less whining and a little more vision from the leaders of the U.S. and European legacy carriers would go a long way towards confronting the problems they will face with changing global demographics and global travel trends.
I don't proclaim to know how best to respond to the "threat" of the Middle East carriers, but can almost certainly guarantee that protectionism is not the answer.
It's interesting to see that management at FedEx and Atlas is vocally against what the Legacy 3 and ALPA are supporting. FedEx and Atlas pilots would be adversely affected by any protectionist measures adopted by the USA in the form of reprisals. They fly significant 5th or 7th freedom type routes and their business model depends heavily on that. UPS can be included in there too, I guess. JetBlue and a few others code share with the some of the Middle East three. So doesn't that benefit their pilots with increased connecting traffic?
Be careful what you wish for, it may not be exactly what you think it will be.
But that's pretty typical of anything that ALPA touches. It was partially their arrogance that subjected us to twenty plus years of RJs and super low wages for a significant number of professional pilots in the USA.
Typhoonpilot