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The most frequent fliers on Gulf airlines’ US routes are Indians, accounting for more than a third of the passengers, according to a Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (Capa) report.
Gulf airlines are rapidly adding flights to the US. This month, Qatar Airways announced three destinations — Atlanta, Boston and Los Angeles — it will serve next year. Emirates announced a service to Orlando.
The expansion is a source of the escalating trade dispute between Gulf and US airlines and the latter have demanded a freeze on additional flights by Gulf airlines to the US.
The Capa report, released earlier this month, shows passengers from India contributed 36 per cent to Emirates and Etihad’s US traffic in a 12-month period ending August 2014. In the case of Qatar’s US traffic, the share of Indian passengers is 28 per cent.
The second-biggest source for Gulf US flights are their local markets. The UAE contributes 18 per cent to Emirates and Etihad's US traffic. The share of other countries is under 10 per cent except Pakistan which contributes 18 per cent to Etihad's US traffic. For Qatar Airways only nine per cent of its US traffic is local.
In the past two years, Etihad has been able to carry more passengers from India following its alliance with Jet but Qatar Airways' growth in the market has been slow because India has not been keen to revise air traffic rights with Qatar due to the limited interest of Indian carriers.
Two other factors have benefited Etihad to expand traffic to the US. “Etihad has been short of ultra-long-haul aircraft needed to reach the US. Etihad was able to utilise surplus Jet Airways aircraft, some being placed directly on US services,” Capa said.
The other advantage has been the setting up of US customs and immigration pre clearance facility in Abu Dhabi which allows passengers to complete both the formalities in the emirate before boarding the flight to US.
Emirates is the largest carrier on the India-US routes with a share of over 18 per cent. Air India (13.3 per cent) and British Airways (12.5 per cent) take up number two and three posts. Qatar Airways and Etihad's share in India-US traffic is 5.4 per cent and 4.6 per cent, respectively.
Analysts expect the Gulf airlines to expand their long haul routes further over the next few years having ordered dozens of Airbus and Boeing medium and long haul jets.
“You don’t order hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Airbus A380s, A350s, Boeing 777s, 777Xs and 787s to have them look pretty on the tarmac,” said aviation expert Saj Ahmad.
“One of the biggest feeds into the Gulf carriers is that of the USA. Emirates already has a huge bond with US airline JetBlue. Latin America too is another region where feeder growth is still in its infancy given the gradual expansion here. But we could well see tie ups between Gulf airlines and local airlines. Equally, we can see that Qatar Airways is benefiting from its partnership with British Airways (BA) - not just through BA's big European footprint, but also thanks to its North American dominance that allows a passenger to fly from New York to Heathrow on BA, and then on Qatar Airways from London to Doha and beyond. The growth potential is limited only by access, not by demand,” Ahmad added.
