http://atwonline.com/international-...athaus-says-rise-gulf-carriers-threatens-glob
It seems things are heating up and getting more interesting as the ME carriers try and expand so quickly at an unprecedented expansion rate into existing markets.
By Perry Flint | January 24, 2011
Emirates Airline, Qatar Airways and Etihad represent a new kind of competitive threat that is incompatible with the existing world aviation order and that probably needs to be dealt with through ICAO, Assn. of European Airlines Secretary General Ulrich Schulte-Strathaus said last week in Washington.Schulte-Strathaus told the International Aviation Club that the trio of Persian Gulf-based carriers "are owned by their respective governments and operated as an instrument of national strategy—if 'national' is the right word within this regional rivalry—and they are integrated vertically across commerce, tourism and foreign policy." For their state owners, Schulte-Strathaus said, "The airlines are just a part—a tool—of this vertically integrated economic chain," and they are "being driven by a policy which is not compatible with that of the US and Europe, or I suspect, Australia, China, Japan, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Korea and so on."
He stated that the three "have more widebody seats on order than the entire US industry has in its current fleet … 425 brand new long-haul aircraft in the next five years." And they will fly "everywhere," he said, before asking: "Does it make sense for airlines and travelers worldwide if three carriers—two of which have never made a profit—collectively commit $100 billion to transforming the aviation map of the world?"
After stating that limiting market access is the wrong approach, he proposed that ICAO could become a WTO of the air, negotiating "a mechanism to deal with capacity dumping in the field of aviation." Schulte-Strathaus acknowledged "it has been quite a while since anyone in the airline industry mentioned capacity dumping as an issue ... But, the specter of an airline as part of a government vertically integrated design operating to all corners of the world forces us to reconsider the issue."