EU to tackle unfair airline competition
 

"The European Union proposed new rules on Thursday to more effectively tackle alleged unfair competitive practices by foreign airlines as it seeks to ensure European carriers can withstand fierce competition overseas..."
EU to tackle unfair airline competition with new rules | Reuters

Yippee
Now we can all be Alitalia !

Good luck with that Mr EU..!

Gulf carriers bring in revenue beyond the EU tax mans wildest dreams. No one is going to stop that.

EK alone makes the UK Chancellor about 5 million GBP a day in APD tax with their 14 dailies.

Etihad open to ?deepening? Alitalia ties as bidding kicks off | GulfNews.com

Try again
 

So you are saying that each EK flight provides £ 357,000 revenue daily to the U.K. Govt ? Shurley shome mishtake , or have I misunderstood ?

No but flights to Dubai alone bring in the UK govt taxpayer £654,566 per day x 30 or
£19.6 mill PCM

This is worked out by bag of "fag packet" 269,000 departing pax PCM to DXB x £73 APD
I am not however an expert spotter that counts every person on or off of the a/c for all destinations but purely splitting the 538,000 pax PCM that are both arr/dep into the UK and halfing them.

Whe are talking EU here. UK is not a good exemple anymore...

Why on earth would the EU care about the APD tax in the UK? They're on their way out, in case you didn't get the memo.

Here's a quote from the article: The move comes after repeated complaints from some European airlines, notably Air France KLM and Lufthansa, about Gulf carriers receiving illegal government subsidies, charges Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad all deny.

No mention of IAG, who've been awfully silent in this debate. Surely not because they are partially owned by Qatar?

It is also interesting to read, what 'sanctions' the EU will bring upon non-EU airlines who, following a complaint from an EU carrier, are found to be engaging in unfair practices: They'll go after ground handling and/or impose financial penalties. This elegantly skirts around the issue of traffic rights, as in 'sure, you can land in FRA, but there won't be anybody there to handle your flight and, oh, here's bill for a couple of millions'.

The loser here will be the consumers, who will have to pay the actual going rate for a jolly to Bangers. Well, the ME3 would also stand to lose much, if not all, but I for one couldn't care less what hardship airlines based in a theoratic dictatorship might face. I'd rather protect taxpaying jobs in the EU, if it comes to that.

I think the EU issue is to avoid LH and AF (and BA as it is now Spanish owned not British) from being screwed over any more by the ME 3 pirates with their once bottomless pit financing. They are gradually having to adjust to the realities of lower oil prices and this si the time to hit them hard.

The Eu are not that bad on airline competition actually after all EZ FR and Wizz do pretty well and have materially impacted pricing in UK. But its one thing these Eu upstarts taking revenue from BA LH etc because they are still EU companies but the ME 3 are not .
As for the APD argument -well if the ME3 disappeared the pax would still be going but on an EU carrier instead so that revenue isnt lost to any government

How do Norwegian fit into all this? Grey area.

I have only read the Reuters article, to me it is not clear how that is going to help and on what timescale. Governments and airlines may send complaints to the EC, good. Does it say what the EC shall do once it receives such complaint and on what time scale? That part I missed.

This seems only to target the big ME3 (possibly soon to be reduced to 2 ) while the real danger to our West European main Airlines and its associated social model is in my views more coming from inside our own continent. The "damp lease" system started by Norwegian , and the recent move by RYR to go for the business pax and base aircraft at main airports ( e.g. FRA) are just the most striking examples.

ATC W
What you say is true but FR are an EU outfit and Norwegian are sort of EU so money may flow from say AF-FR but it stays within the EU, money lost by BA or LH to EK doesn't and EK have nothing to give in return. How they coned the UK regulators to give them access to every major UK airport is quite beyond me

Good point. I presume a deal was done in the back room of smoky bar by a few EU civil servants hopelessly distracted by good looking women (and probably a boys), as it always is. They can do this because the criminals who run the EU have no oversight and are totally unaccountable. Why should they care if the EU has not received a reasonable quid-pro-quo, after all, their gravy train will run forever? The deal agreement to allow unfettered access to the EU will last as long as these criminals stay in charge. As the first whiff of a problem, the great and good will be whisked off first class for a meeting in [name somewhere nice served by the pirates] for a two week extensive briefing and intelligence gathering process so a rapid decision can be taken in the next ten years or so.

It's called "Free Trade".

It really means screwing everybody except those making a profit.

A Mirage
 

I think now that we are getting closer to this Oasis, it turns out to be fake:
A true mirage: Everything is upside down and Poof, disappear.

Not even the old Flag carriers of Europe and the rest of the world was subsidized a 100% like this, ever. The hub and spoke is dead, yet they steal pax from Europe and North America at a dramatic rate. Just to sell Airbus and Boeing a/c.
The Delta CEO has manned up long time ago and called the bluff. About time EU did the same.
The open skies of Europe is old as sin. I did wetlease for Proteus in France in 1997 in a LN aircraft ( Norwegian). Proteus was a AF feeder and we were going to expand the Do328 TP operation as Proteus expanded to F100. Just an example of european co-operation.

It is a fact that the low cost has made it hard for the Flagcarriers, but I have used my own money on every tqt since 1999 and the cost of a tqt before lowcost was absurd.

The problem for the old guard is: Fair and free internal competition internaly in EU AND absurdly state run and 100% subsidized ME 1950s hub and spoke style carriers.

How EU even let one ME carrier land in EU is strange, never mind killing of our long haul with this armada.

And letting them invest in EU carrier, now that is high treason.

I was wondering when Europe and North America was going to wake up.
A little bit late , but not to late.

Can someone explain in simple terms how exactly the ME3 have an unfair advantage, other than being in a low tax environment, not paying much for staff and delivering a good product ?

I read the Reuters article and can see no mention of how an unfair advantage is gained, in practice and just some waffle about what happens if there is any evidence ?

[QUOTE=GrahamO;9798354]Can someone explain in simple terms how exactly the ME3 have an unfair advantage, other than being in a low tax environment, not paying much for staff and delivering a good product ?

The advantage the Pirates, as some see fit to call them, have is a vastly superior service coupled with very low fares.
Same as whinging about theLoCo's on shorthaul except for the service difference.
I avoid legacy carriers esp US ones due to poor service

No, it's not an unfair advantage but it's not a level playing field either. The ME3 are little more than pirates who rip off whatever they can from others. Instead of robbing ships they now do this using airliners flown by staff with few rights, pay little tax and virtually nothing in social costs. Worst, the westerners who work there expect to return home to a society they have not contributed to and possibly even helped destroy. It's not as is if they even have a local market worth tapping into by way of trade. So, if the ME3 want access, let's have a level playing field and a social tax, per flight, on the ME3 may be the way forward. If they don't want to contribute, that's no problem. They can just stick to flying in their own region.

Thanks. I thought as much.

Sounds like it is, as you say, not an unfair advantage but a situation where the EU is trying to enforce its employment laws and bloated economic model onto other countries by trying to tell other countries how they should employ people and behave, so as to make themselves as uneconomic as EU based airlines ? basically, be as sh*t as EU airlines or we wont let you in.

It appears you have a significant chip on the shoulder there if I may be so bold.

Staff choose to work for airlines and if they don't like the terms then they shouldn't go there in the first place - but very many do, and are very happy doing it for the money.

It sounds like you are the sort of person who makes a choice to sign up to something, and then spends their life complaining about your choice, as if someone else forced you to make it.

Workers in the ME choose to get a tax tree income (not a tax free environment though) and forego the bloated bureaucracy and tiny benefits of the EU - even if working in the EU were actually available to them as a choice.

Its personal choice. A choice which you would appear to believe should not even be offered.

As to the tax issue, most people flying and working in the ME wouldnt even get a job in their own economies so its hardly sensible to suggest they should stay in a broken economy when they can work overseas and send valuable money to their families at home to support them.

Maybe the EU should stick to flying in its own region if it plans on remaining hopelessly uncompetitive in the world market, and offering second class service for first class prices ?

PS the concept of a level playing field is complete BS in business. The inventor of the next successful 'widget' wont give up that advantage just because the EU wants the others failures to have chance will it ? Oh yes, its the EU - failures must be protected even when the market changes and they are completely useless.

Let's look at other regions. Like the former Eastern Bloc, the Americas, Russia, Asia etc. Each of these regions have different social norms, different religions and trading practices. But at their heart they have economies that are worth trading with. The UAE does not, so what's in it for us? Even the Chinese are putting something back into the African hosts whose countries they are currently raping.

Fat, bloated, inefficient - these are all adjectives that can quite correctly be used to describe many European airlines. But in turn, the societies from which they operate can also be described as open, fair, caring, tolerant, moral, progressive etc. But this comes at a price. That price can be paid by allowing fair access, trade or tariffs. The countries hosted by the ME3 offer nothing in return. Trade is trade, meaning both sides should get something out of it. Our current arrangement is unbalanced and needs redress.

Lastly, our lives are richer if they are made up of more than just money. Being valued, treated with respect, having the opportunity to do what you want and not having to worry too much about your future. But when you trade with people who offer nothing in return these things become harder to achieve.

So I'm in total agreement with you. We'll stick to our bit of the world and the ME3 can stick to its own. Problem solved.