Emirates today flies 84 flights each week from nine USA gateways – Boston, Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington DC. The estimated annual economic value of Emirates’ services to these airports and their surrounding regions is $2.9 billion[ii]. In addition, via interline arrangements, Emirates has provided over 775,000 feed passengers to US legacy carriers, producing $133 million in financial benefits to them over the past five years.[iii]
The Big 3 are earning record profits, while seemingly content to remain on the lower ranks of global customer satisfaction surveys. They claim to have lost traffic to competition but in fact on every route that Emirates has established to the US, overall traffic has grown significantly after Emirates’ entry.[iv]
The Big 3 assert, in their PR campaign, that if a daily wide-body flight by a legacy carrier is lost to a foreign carrier, then 800 US jobs will be lost. The Big 3 relied on two studies of job creation in the German and Austrian markets to make their analysis, and on closer examination, these studies actually contradict their arguments and find that Emirates supported 2,400 jobs in Germany and 3,300 jobs in Austria per round trip. More specific to US jobs, aviation experts Campbell-Hill Aviation Group has analyzed the US jobs effect of Emirates’ flights to the USA, and found that Emirates supports nearly 4,000 US jobs per daily round trip service. [v]
Groundswell of support from broad spectrum of US stakeholders
As submissions to the US Government illustrate, there is a tremendous groundswell of support from across the spectrum of US stakeholders who believe the US national interest is best served by maintaining Open Skies policy and not selectively unraveling it.
These stakeholders, representing low cost carriers, non-legacy carrier hub cities and airports, air cargo carriers, leading hospitality and tourism businesses amongst others, are a far better barometer than the self-interested legacy carriers. These stakeholders believe the national interest should be the Obama Administration’s North Star in this matter, and not the parochial interest of Delta, United and American in constraining competition for their benefit alone.
Sir Tim said: “The Big 3’s white paper is littered with self-serving rhetoric about ‘fair trade’, ‘level playing field’, and ‘saving jobs’, but their mess of legal distortions and factual errors falls apart at the slightest scrutiny. The allegations about Emirates receiving subsidies or competing unfairly are false. The Big 3 are far from being ‘harmed’ financially by Emirates’ operations, and they are not even operating in the same markets that we are.
“What’s happening is that the legacy carriers, not satisfied with their protected domestic market, plus their anti-trust immunized global alliances which let them collude on capacity and price with joint venture partners, are now flexing their lobbying muscle to further restrict valuable international air transport links for American consumers, communities and companies. The case put forward by Delta, United and American Airlines against Emirates is full of holes, and if their protectionist campaign were to be successful, it will not end with just the Gulf airlines.”
Emirates’ full response submitted to the US Departments of State, Transportation, and Commerce, can be viewed here: www.emirates.com/USsubsidyRebuttal
