Emirates Airline Could Use European Hubs To Expand In Americas

Dubai’s Emirates airline could expand its route network by using European hubs to fly into North and South American cities, its president said, a move that could anger U.S. carriers which accuse it of competing unfairly through state subsidies.

Emirates is considering plans to open new routes to U.S. cities from Dubai, as well as flying new routes from European airports under “fifth freedom” rights linked to Open Skies agreements with U.S. authorities, Tim Clark told The National newspaper.

Fifth freedom rights allow an airline to fly between foreign countries as a part of services to and from its home country. Emirates already does this with a Milan-to-New York flight that it launched in October 2013.

“Expand further from European hubs into the U.S.? Yes we might do that,” Clark said. “The kind of abuse we’ve been getting might cause us to do it.”

“And after Milan, we can see how profitable it is. If the Danes or the Swedes were to come to us and say ‘we haven’t got enough flights into the U.S, would you consider it?,’ yes we might do that.”

An Emirates spokeswoman confirmed that Clark was quoted correctly by The National, an English-language newspaper in the United Arab Emirates.

Clark also said “an awful lot” of people in Europe wanted to fly to the other hemisphere, not just to the United States but also to Mexico, South America, the Caribbean and elsewhere.

“We might say to (Delta Air Lines chief executive) Richard Anderson that we’re just going to do what the U.S. government wanted back in 1999, to go trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific with fifth freedom open skies,” said Clark.

Delta and other U.S. airlines have charged three fast-growing Gulf carriers — Emirates, Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways – of receiving more than $40 billion in unfair subsidies, and the U.S. airlines’ unions have urged their government to halt the Open Skies agreement. The Gulf carriers have dismissed the charges as false.