Etihad has announced less than daily service to start to and from Dallas / Fort Worth to Abu Dhabi with a 777-200LR.

Now DFW airport will enjoy services to the Middle East hubs by Emirates (daily), QATAR and Etihad.  If you think that suddenly that many people in the DFW area would like to fly to the Middle East, you would be wrong.

This is about developing a route to these hubs for follow on flights to these airlines other destinations in the Near East, Middle East, Africa and India.  This is about feed and this is about gaining a customer base before American Airlines becomes too big and too strong on those very same routes.

Because you can believe that a big part of AA’s strategy will be to grow internationally and those Middle East carriers’ route strengths are places where AA is weak today.  Dallas is a large and even growing IT hub and hires tens of thousands of contractors from India alone.  These carriers are the popular airlines for those people to fly.  The connections are more desirable and the service is perceived to be far better than any US or India based carrier.

Will it work for these carriers?  I kind of think that QATAR has the best chance since it gave in and joined Oneword.  American can feed that airline an immense amount of traffic.  The question is. . . will Parker & Company see QATAR as an ally or a foe as they work to expand American Airlines reach and attendant profitability.

I think Emirates and Etihad may well can survive on that route on the traffic to and from India alone.  Presently, there are many who travel to Houston first in order to take advantage of flights on those airlines to India.

Filed under: Airline News by ajax
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