Fliion:
Read the content in the article. It says that EK reported its first sales decline in a decade and the load factor has dropped by 3.1 points. It's admittantly open to interpretation, but to discard a contributing factor of the increase of capacity by the 380 would be nothing but naive. We all know that such oversize and overweight aircraft only work with very high load factors and the yield depends on the number of high yield seats. By simply looking at predicted loads, it is easy to see that basically only two or three destinations fulfill that wish.
No one "needs" to get 615+ passengers to any destination, one "can", but there is no where near any "need". The volume can be handled as Wiz described.
Your conspiracy theory of all other airline managers convening not to buy the whale, only to sabotage EK is only amusing. Feeling the low blood sugar level already?