Yes, but that's US carriers' choice...

They're choosing not to fly to Doha or Abu Dhabi and opt to let QR, EY, EK do all the flying... Sorry, you choose not to compete or put any of your own metal on those routes within your alliances, you lose any credibility with whiny arguments.

 

That's because there's nowhere near the O&D demand for curent flying, much less dumping additional widebodies on those routes. The ME3 are doing them because they transfer the pax all over the world, quite often to places already served by US airlines and existing partners.

And speaking of whining, its funny watching the ME3 conniption fit over even the possibility that their sky blackening half hourly 777/380 dual subsidized fantasy might not pan out.

 

Gloopy, I travel between the Gulf and the U.S. when going home on leave and flights are always packed with Indians, Asians and Africans. Also, lots of American contractors.

What gets me is seeing American code on a QR or EY flight... Again, why not AA B-777 to DOH or AUH and then transfer these pax to metal operated by QR and EY?

And if there's no demand or money to be made doing this flying, why get all bent out of shape about others doing it?

 

While there is some O&D demand on those routes, the bulk of it are pax transferring to all points everywhere from there. IOW many on those packed planes aren't just going to the city of first landing. They are going to places already served by US airlines and their current partners. See below.


Because that would just feed ME3's poaching of our industry because those connections are in many cases siphoned off of routes we or our existing partners already do (or used to do).


I'm all in favor of a fair and balanced open skies agreement with the ME3. We can split the O&D demand for flights per day from our country to their country. Currently that's about 2 flights a day for us, so 2 flights a day for them is fair. If there is more demand than that, we can both share in it equally. But we're under no legal, moral or pseudo subsidized competitive obligation to divert our existing traffic flow away from us and onto the ME3 airlines, even if they are trying to bribe us with our own money to do it.

And under no circumstances should ME3 be allowed to buy into open skies agreements from other countries. That's just insane for us to allow that.

 

Let's just look at some facts instead of rambling rhetoric.

Emirates operates just over 230 aircraft. They currently serve 9 U.S. destinations. Some with more than 1 flight per day. Their combined service equates to around 32.5 aircraft if you use a generous 2.5 aircraft requirement per flight per city pair currently served. That is 13.8% of their total fleet. From that they derive 11.4% of their global revenue. Including freighter service Emirates serves 142 total destinations worldwide. So the amount of U.S. cities is currently 6.3% of their global total. They do that with a 79.4% load factor as reported in the latest annual report.

In the last fiscal year their revenue was $21.9 billion from airline operations. $2.5 billion of that was from the "Americas" market so also includes Toronto, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aries, and Rio. Let's say less than $2 billion directly attributable to the USA.

The other $19.4 billion came from people travelling from Europe (29% of total ), Gulf and Middle East (10.3%), West Asia and Indian Ocean (10.2%), Africa (9.2%), and East Asia/Australasia (29.5%).

Emirates, is getting grouped in with Etihad and Qatar with the word "subsidized", but paid a $224 million dividend to their majority shareholder at the end of the last fiscal year. They have paid similar dividends in previous years. How an airline that is paying a dividend can be termed "subsidized" is kind of difficult to grasp.

Maybe, there is truth to the help they received for the hedge loss but it's interesting to note that they reported a $268 million net profit in the 2008/9 fiscal year and $1.1 billion profit in the 2009/10 fiscal year. The years that hedge loss apparently occurred. Again, they are paying a dividend to their majority shareholder every year. So even if they did get a short term off the books loan how does that make them "subsidized"?

With a 79.4% load factor how are they "dumping additional wide bodies".

What you and everyone else should be looking at is that other 88.6% of revenue from the 133 non-U.S. destinations that Emirates serves. That again is $19.4 billion in revenue.

Instead of trying to protect $2 billion in revenue, much of which is stimulated new demand, why not try to just go after a 10-20% share of what Emirates alone has from their foreign operations? That would equate to more U.S. airline pilot jobs. Grab a share of what Etihad and Qatar do and the numbers go up significantly from there.

But no, the rhetoric we get from you is shut down Boeing's sale of aircraft to foreign airlines. Never mind that could cost tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of highly paid U.S. manufacturing jobs. Shut down foreign airline service to communities in the USA. Never mind the adverse economic impact that could have on those airports and their cities.

Clearly there is O&D demand for a lot of the routes being flown. It just wasn't served efficiently or stimulated by U.S. airlines and/or their code share partners. They need to up their game and increase their presence in the markets that Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar are serving.

That is the way forward, not the ALPA proposed way.




Typhoonpilot


P.S. Let's not forget your wacko threats to deny the foreign earned income exclusion to Americans working overseas and to ban them from returning to the USA.

 

If it's only 6% they shouldn't be too concerned with restrictions on access to the U.S.

 

Nice try, but you know their growth plans in the US are orders of magnitude greater than that.

As for their freighter servce, they've stated before that they want to go into freight limited only by factory deliveries of aircraft, but they are too limited by logistical constraints to fully commit to the two front war in that way. For now. They are EGO driven meglomaniacs that want to dominate international traffic to the US and Europe, far beyond even the most ambitious O&D travel demands of DXB.et al.


I'm sure just the Boeing and Airbus welfare checks they get are far greater than that, not to mention their other well documented internal subsidies as well as "soft" subsidies, like the complete lack of labor laws that would get a US or EU airline, literally, SWAT raided by a small army if they attempted to impliment them in their countries. You can bet that any US airline CEO would gladly pay a cute little paltry pittance of a $225M "dividend" to shred labor laws and the US/EU court systems just to name a few.


SkyBus had high load factors too. So what.

I'm not saying there is zero demand for travel to those 3 cities. Nor am I saying that there isn't a solid geographical demand for connection travel to emerging markets and all that. But what they are doing is flat out predatory. They are a foreign enemy of our industry and hell bent on transfering those jobs from us to them. They are massively subsidized, coddled and insulated from reality on all fronts. Even without cabotage and foreign ownership they intend on massively increasing direct US service to many, many, many times any semblance of O&D economics, far beyond what all US airlines combined could ever afford to duplicate. With cabotage, look out. Well not you per say, as you clearly love the expat gig and would love for it to infest the US and EU to its full emerging market extent.

So we should respond to EK's seat dumping and feed transfer by overflying them? Even as the Bank of Boeing cuts them welfare checks that we don't get plus all the other subsidies they get? Right, I'm sure we'll get right on that.

Wrong again. I don't care if they want to buy a billion 777's (and at this rate, 2 or 3 more "Heros of Farnsborough" orders and they'll be pretty close to that) I just want their completely unwarranted subsidies instantly eliminated. At the very least, and I'm not advocating this other than to say its a slightly lesser evil, extend the same rediculous subsidy to US airlines so we can at least compete equally for aircraft financing.

Right. Let's just bring back the WPA. Pay people to dig holes then pay them to fill them back up again. For great success. Even your hero Clark has admitted they would still buy the planes, right after he made his pathetic empty threat to make us "take the airplanes back" LOL!!!!!!!!!!

Oh no, the poor communities! What we need are dual subsidized EK 380's and regional 50's to every city every 20 minutes! Write your congressman!


I never suggested to ban them from returning to the USA. They should either pay full tax OR they can renounce (and be hit with a gentle one time exit tax) and live the EK dream as long as they want. Our tax code is a direct pillar of their business model and one of the primary recruitment tools they have. Its time to take a serious look at eliminating it.

 

LOL exactly. We all know how big this is. This is about the survival of our entire industry and its not about how great their food is or how hot their oppressed flight attendants are. They are coming for our industry and they are playing dirty. Its time to take the political gloves off and fight back.

We can start by immediately pulling the plug on their illegal MXP route. We have an open skies agreement with the EU for US and EU airlines to fly to and from the EU-US. NOT ME3 airlines or anyone else for O&D ticket sales. They can fuel stop there if they want to, but selling those seats needs to be shut down immediately.

 

You're right. So what? This is why you have a codeshare. Same reason how Emirates flies to JFK, and their pax connect on JetBlue around the US... you can have American fly into Abu Dhabi, connect with Etihad and have Etihad fly those pax on AA's code around the third world. Again, I fail to see the problem.

US airlines have a very limited South Asia service. Why? They codeshare a lot. Why don't they fly through codeshare to a central point somewhere in the Gulf where they connect with the Gulf carriers to take them in the 5-8 hour circle from here... again, no different than Emirates pax coming to JFK and JetBlue flying them all over the US or wherever JB flies.


But it's OK for Boeing, Atlas, Fedex, UPS, Southern, Kalitta, etc. to be financially damaged if we rescind the open skies with UAE/Qatar?


Now why should we pay full tax? We don't use US roads, we don't use US services... No other civilized nation taxes on citizenship - only residence.

Also, we don't live EK/EY/QR dreams. Hell, I was an ALPA pilot whose airline shut down after 61 years in operation with literally 4 days notice. Where was that "brotherhood" for us? For example, health insurance would have been very helpful. Brotherly help with basic finances would have been helpful. Ensuring that all of us had first crack at any new jobs at ALPA airlines would have been helpful... United has that checkbox on their application, and do you know what effect it has? ZERO...

But hey... we got the "oh, too bad... we'll send you the ALPA rag for the next year and then ****** off."

So... what should we do, my ALPA brother?

I'll just say this... may you never find yourself in our situation as it happened.

Now that all ALPA airlines are hiring on all cylinders... and you have applications from all kinds of former ALPA pilots flying for ME3, who were unfortunate to get their airlines pulled from underneath them, and how many are getting called? What have you done to help your unfortunate ALPA brothers/sisters who went overseas to come home?

Instead of being an ALPA brother... you would want to take a giant dump on all of us on top of what happened and how we were treated. Class act......... brother.

 

The fact that the UAE, and most other uncivilized countries, have uncivilized labor laws, is, what it is. Most of the world is like that. All the expats that choose to work there know the score before they sign up. They can also quit. They are all volunteers.

As far as making expat pilot tax law different? Really? Just because they work for a competitor? Lets say you work for DAL. Do you think American Airlines pilots should be treated different than you?

There is a lot I don't like about the sandbox, and their airlines, and I have never applied to one. I also don't like their government subsidies, and I think they mostly exist as an economic development tool for the middle east. And maybe as a hobby for some Sheik.

Last time oil went down to 70 dollars or so, Dubai couldn't pay their bills and had to be bailed out by Abu Dhabi. Oil has been below 50 bucks for several months. Another year of this and we might see a lot of late model 777's and 380's being auctioned off.