The Emirates are a huge yield route, over and above the Pacific - BUT - too late she cried.
EK EY and QR have the run by the nuts.
QF are already codesharing on Etihad and are pretty good on pricing and generally cheaper on EY's own product as American are also often cheaper on trans Pacific rat flights.
If QF ran the route on a startup with the logical 3 month lead time, they would need to deploy 2 or 3 744s to the service to make it work.
The logical thing would be an extension into Europe from there.
Initially you would be lucky to grab 10% point to point traffic into and out of the ME and most would be longhaul Aus to UK/Europe through traffic - not where the dollars are. In the current climate it is a revenue black hole tilting at windmills with blades much larger than the Great White Rat can handle.
Six months of predatory discounting which would not be even touchable by the ACCC would put paid to the valiant endeavour and would also reduce yield on other routes into Europe as seats at a lower cost become available due to the extras on the via ME services.
No win for QF, and well left indeed.
Best all
EWL