Austrian Airlines in spat with Emirates
Austria’s air traffic control centre has rejected Emirates Airline’s bid to almost double its daily flights to Vienna under its planned summer flight schedule.
The news follows an extraordinary attack on Emirates by Austrian Airlines over the Dubai carrier’s access to the European market.
Emirates had planned to increase lights on the Vienna route to 13 a week from March 27 in response to high customer demand, but the request was denied by Austrian authorities over what Emirates has called a “technical disagreement”.
Emirates told Arabian Business it is still in talks with Austrian authorities to secure the landing slots and is optimistic of the outcome.
The refusal follows explosive comments from the co-chairman of Austrian Airlines (AUA) who this week accused Emirates of leveraging its state links to undercut its European rival.
“It’s not a match of airline against airline – it’s a game between a state and AUA,†Peter Malanik told Austria’s Kurier newspaper.
“The hub Dubai is being expanded regardless of the project’s profitability. It’s just about the location. The owner is also the lawmaker, the regulator, it owns the airline and the airport and is in charge of air traffic monitoring. It also provides the kerosene. Money doesn’t matter.â€
Malanik said labour rights rules and consumer protection regulations in Europe prevented the region’s airlines from being able to compete fairly with Gulf carriers.
“The situation is similar to the production of T-shirts using child labour. AUA would need to hire 1,000 staff from Bangladesh immediately to be able to compete. Do we want that? Certainly not,†he said.
Malanik said AUA had scrapped flight routes to Mauritius and Australia due to competition from Emirates.
“[The airline’s] next target is to kill our link to Bangkok,” he added.

Source: Arabian Business
Ian Jarrett
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