Is Emirates Airline Running Out of Sky? | Hacker News Reader

Is Emirates Airline Running Out of Sky?

bloomberg.com

44 pointsSui12 comments

Sad to see the US carriers resort to such methods (asking for trade barriers) to try to resist competition, to the detriment of us all. Perhaps they would be better off improving their own services.

I am not exactly sad to see the US deciding that Dubai is not a valued trading partner for anything other than raw natural resources.

Socially, and culturally, the values that Dubai advocates are anathema to the typical American.

More troubling is the fact that the Emirates is operated by a sovereign totalitarian state, and so it is not as simple as two private companies competition with one another. Can the Emirates ever go out of business? Can the US Post Office ever go out of business?

Excellent comment. Why is it wrong to use trade barriers against a marketplace adversary who has an unfair advantage? We do the same with tariffs for imported products as well in the US (China dumping solar panels on the market below cost, for example).

As an American, I support using trade barriers against Dubai due to their humanitarian/human rights policies (or lack thereof).

I personally avoid Emirates out of protest as well. Spend a little more on a ticket.

That competition comes at a cost - usually on the backs of the lower level employees, such as the crew. Do you want the labor conditions in the article to be common in the US?

I get it, flying is awful. But it's a cutthroat industry. When everyone picks their flight sorting by price, you end up with what we have today.

> That competition comes at a cost - usually on the backs of the lower level employees

This is true of all competition. But the fact is (as described in the article): the US carriers barely compete. Yes the ME3 have a few flights also served by US carriers, but the US ignores most of the interesting places (humiliating decent from the days when Pan Am girdled the globe).

The fact is the US carriers aren't competitive. I only fly them when I have no choice (e.g. internal US flights). Their "strength" is in protected markets (domestic flights) where they have duopolies or monopolies, just like the telecoms carriers. American (4 million miles) UA (1 million miles) want to force me to buy from them rather than try to woo me.

It's no coincidence that the US carriers I prefer to fly (Virgin/Alaska and Jet Blue) are the ones not joining this action.

I disagree that the competition always comes at a cost. Many European airlines tend to have a better reputation in the flying community than the major American carriers, and I have no doubt they provide more worker's rights than are the norm in the US. The same can be said for the top-notch Asian carriers, which to be fair also tend to have a lower cost of living and likely pay as a result.

That's nonsense. The European carriers are awful and have terrible reputations lately. Have you flown domestic on a European carrier? I'd rather fly any US legacy carrier domestic than the Euro carriers.

My experiences with US carriers is delays, overpriced cancelled flights, overbooked flights, broken in-flight entertainment, and cranky staff. It's so bad, that if Ryanair flew to the US, I would happily sit in their slightly irritating cabins (with no TV) - it would genuinely be a better experience.

A couple of stories about Emirates Airlines recently, do these originate in their publicity dept?

This author writes mostly about the Middle East, and tends to put out a lot of articles about the Emirates in general. Theres' 10 articles on her listing about Dubai [1]

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/authors/ARO3-lm4s5s/deena-kamel

I thought this one was a little less bias than others.

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