Originally Posted by
Australopithecus
The restoration of international flying is going to take some time, especially to the US. I cannot even imagine what a recovery looks like domestically after everyone is broke or behind a year in their repayments. Uncharted waters.
On the other hand, its not too farfetched to imagine a return to regulated fares and protectionism. I would be very surprised if any ME carrier ever has more than one or two services a day to Oz. The government is going to have to abandon its free market ideology in order to restore local jobs ( and crucially, the local tax base)
I think you've got the ME market a little wrong. For traffic to/from Australia and NZ the ME acts as an incredible hub from mainland Europe as well as Africa. They can consolidate passengers from regions with 100's of millions population.
However, having multiple carriers in close proximity (e.g. Emirates, Etihad, Qatar) dilutes that potential market. I can see the first two merging, but they will still serve multiple cities between them, and they will still sardine backpackers into A380's