Desertbananas
You hit on a basic difference of interpretation whereon the politicians and press masterfully play the fiddle:
The EU and Canada look at airlift as a solitary entity of trade. Thus they pretend that the UAE has enough capacity to serve its country.
The UAE looks at airlift as a trade contained in the whole trade complement and therefore do not count flight/passenger numbers, but the total trade volume.
So it all comes down to which point of view you share.
As for the unfair (slavery) advantage of the ME. This is so true, but applies to many trades in many developing countries. The West still buys Chinese goods, don't they? What about their laws, labor and human rights conditions? If you go down that road, go down the whole way.
On the other hand, I agree to a certain extent with the unfair advantage argument. This would be the card I would play, not the protectionist one:
- Why not try to level the fields with i.e.more audits, spot checks etc.? A thorough audit of EK, EY and especially the GCAA would spread panic around here and reveal a lot of such unfair practices (but again, you would have to accept more transparency at home as well and, believe me, there is a lot of similar mud hidden there, so it will not happen).
- Some spot checks of logbooks of passing crew would reveal some fatigue related issues, if you apply the NASA or other competent research values (but again, it would reveal similar practices if you'd check some outfits in the west).
- Some more strict investigations into errors of crews could reveal blatant skill and training deficits (and again some European companies would look just as bad).
You see, my remedy would not work, as globalization has slowly but surely leveled the field to the lower common denominator. Been there, seen that.
But this takes a lot of steam out of Schibulinskilitis argument: The West is no longer very far from slavery as well!
One should not throw stones in a porcelain shop.