Originally Posted by
hookshot123
Changing the subject from subsidies.
The ME3 are gutting the European carriers except for the European's flights to the U.S.
But it looks to me like the ME3 carriers will soon run out of routes that will have much effect on U.S. carriers. Even if they fly from every U.S. city to their Gulf hubs they will only poach the traffic out of the US to the middle east and southeast asia. Those Gulf hubs can't touch the U.S. traffic to Europe, South America, Japan, China, etc.
Don't get me wrong, I have answered all calls to action and agree they are unfairly subsidized. I work for Delta and am ****ed we have pulled out of India. But are they really a major threat to U.S. carriers? I honestly don't see the U.S. negotiating new agreements that allow them to fly from countries other than their own to the U.S. (i.e. Milan to JFK) And I don't see passengers preferring the ME carriers so much they would add 10 to 12 hours of connection/flight time to their trip to Europe.
Eventually it seems they are going to sink under the weight of all those huge aircraft orders.
JMHO
Hook
This paper just came out:
http://www.openandfairskies.com/wp-c...-Traffic-1.pdf
Take a read and see if you change your mind about the damage these highly subsidized ME airlines are causing and could cause US airlines.
I totally got a boner when they started talking about regression analysis in the paper I linked above. Was that wrong?
The Etihad paper was.....well....lame for the same reasons mentioned above. The US government handed 36 Billion bucks to the US airlines when they went through restructuring? I must have missed that one. The US Government gave the US airlines 30 Billion through the PBGC program? The PBGC program isn't even funded by the US governement. Does the Risk Advisory Group, who wrote the analysis for Etihad, even have access to Google? Wait. Probably not since the government in the countries in question get to choose what their "loyal subjects" see and not see on the internet and in the media. The poor guys at Risk Advisory probably tried to Google "PBGC" and got a handsome picture and bio of one the sheikhs instead.