PARIS (AFP) - Some of the world's major airlines, already bedeviled by competition from cut-rate carriers, are facing a fresh challenge from Gulf-based companies that are churning out huge profits and buying up new aircraft in great numbers.
The success of the Gulf carriers has sparked a debate in civil aviation circles, with competitors wanting to know if it is due to a new economic model of operation or to unfair competitive practices.
The issue surfaced at last year's Cannes (France) Cannes Airlines Forum, where Air France-KLM chief executive Jean-Cyril Spinetta voiced concern about the operating conditions enjoyed by the Dubai-based carrier Emirates.
At this year's forum Emirates chief director Timothy Clark insisted that his company receives neither government subsides nor privileged access to oil markets.
Spinetta replied that he was not contesting Clark's assertions.
"I am simply asking him if he would agree, so that we all could gain from the quality of what he has done, to open all his accounts ... to a mission from Air France-KLM," Spinetta said, adding that he wanted "to understand the model and how it operates."
The proposal, issued last month, has yet to be acted on.
Clark has insisted nonetheless that the business model used by Emirates is different from that of Air France-KLM.
It is based largely on intensive use of a strategically positioned hub -- such as at the insersection of Asia and the west -- and a modern fleet of long-haul aircraft.
Emirates is by far the principal client for the future Airbus A380, having placed orders for 43 of the giant planes.
At the same time Emirates, as is true of other Gulf airlines such as Etihad, Qatar Airways and Gulf Air, has little time for commercial alliances.
"Basically, global alliances are anathema to the Emirates business model," Clark said.
"Alliances are too often clubs joined by airlines struggling more to survive than to satisfy the needs of their customers."
But some industry analysts suggest that the Emirates model is not original.
"In a sense, what the carriers in the Middle East are doing today replicates what the southeast Asian carriers (Singapore Airlines, Thai, Cathay) did in the early 1980s," said British Airways chief executive Rod Eddington, former managing director of Cathay Pacific.
"And history suggests they won't be all successful."
Unlike that of low-cost carriers, the model followed by Emirates does not create markets, according to an expert with the French civil aviation authority.
"Traffic statistics show that the low-cost companies take an active part in developing the market," he said, citing their efforts to make air travel available to low-income travellers and to open new routes overlooked by larger rivals.
Emirates and other similar carriers, he maintained, are interested in taking travellers away from competitors rather than in developing new markets, a practice that has sparked comment from some of their rivals.
11/05/2004 - 17:25 GMT - AFP