I mentioned all of the cost base points above and I'm aware of them, hence I said EK is probably our best bet (after LS), namely because no other carriers are interested because they think there is no market.
The only point I'm trying to make is Dubai has built it's own market from Newcastle when it came out of the blue with an unsustainable frequency and aircraft too large for the market... So people said. Why couldn't New York do exactly the same after being at the top of the North East's wishlist for... 15 years?
N.b I would like to say that "very little, if any, human rights" is pretty harsh when generalising a whole country, yes jobs for unskilled workers in Dubai do have harsh working and living conditions from our point of view but it's a damn site better than most of their options at home. For businesses like Emirates, that is untrue, I highly doubt so many European, Australian and American people would work for them that being the case. I don't know if you've been before but the Middle East gets a lot of bad cop over here, Qatar seems about 10 years behind Dubai in all respects, including human rights, but seldom is it as bad as made out over here. I have spoken to plenty of "working class" people in Dubai, who will be doing these kind of jobs and they are happy with the jobs they have. Finally with regards to a 48 hour week and no minimum wage, yes it is not ideal, we probably think it's very unfair over here but you still can't get away from the fact that the UAE is a developing country, the UK was hardly fair in the 1800's was it? I think they've probably beaten us on that one and I'm sure they'll even themselves out to "our standards" soon enough. Any airline based in the ME has advantages of lower labour costs, fuel costs (for now), no tax (does that work both ways?) but it's the luck of the draw and times change.
List of minimum wages by country - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia