Don, I was referring to the huge increases in capacity a couple of years after the initial entry into the Oz market. The RAAF was operating out of the UAE from the start of the Iraq campaign.
7378FE, I suspect that you miss the point about the available capacity into Dubai and Abu Dhabi - there is no significant market into those ports. Virgin Oz is utilising some capacity to feed Etihads services to many other ports (mainly Europe) but as all the other incumbent airlines on the Kangaroo route already have services via other ports (SIN, KUL, BKK, HKG, etc) to Europe, thus operations through the UAE ports would be duplicating existing capacity.