Dubai Announces World's Largest Airport

Wow. 6 parallel runways. How are they going to name those?

esay - 24 L C R and 25 L C R or whatever direction it configures to

In article <hEPif.22635$Ox.5696@tornado.texas.>,
Frank F. Matthews <frankfmatthews@houston.> wrote:

>> Dubai, Nov 22 (UNI) Dubai has announced plans to build the world's
>> largest airport at a cost of 30 billion dirham that could handle 120
>> million passenger.
>
>Sounds like potential for a very large white elephant.

You can say this again. Who owns this ``Emirates'' outfit, anyway?
Some sheikh, I guess. Looks like typical nouveau-riche megalomania.
White elephant of an airport packed with white elephants of airplanes
(380s, that no sane airline has yet to order in any significant
quantity) next to a bunch of 100-story white elephant hotels in the
middle of nowhere.

VS wrote:
> Dubai has no industry, no natural or cultural attractions, just a
> bunch of shops (for tourists whose idea of a good vacation is a trip
> to a giant shopping mall), hotels with gold-plated toilets (for the
> European chavs with more money than sense and their Arab equivalents),

Sounds like Las Vegas, which started as nothing in the middle of the
desert. But now is a huge international tourist attraction. It's just
shopping, hotels, and casinos.

In article <1133414807.808179.316010@f14g2000cwb. .com>,
Bucky <uw_badgers@email.com> wrote:

>> Dubai has no industry, no natural or cultural attractions, just a
>> bunch of shops (for tourists whose idea of a good vacation is a trip
>> to a giant shopping mall), hotels with gold-plated toilets (for the
>> European chavs with more money than sense and their Arab equivalents),
>
>Sounds like Las Vegas, which started as nothing in the middle of the
>desert. But now is a huge international tourist attraction. It's just
>shopping, hotels, and casinos.

Excellent analogy, except that I don't recall any Vegas-based airlines
buying white elephants^H^H^H^H A380s by the dozen. Other than that,
Dubai indeed seems to be going after the same clientele: folks for whom
vacation means shopping, gambling and boozing in some tawdry fake-marble
``palazzo.''

Of course, Las Vegas became what it is thanks to being located within
an easy driving distance from the 6th largest economy in the world
(I think even now something like 1/3 of all visitors to Vegas come
from California). Dubai is located in the middle of nowhere.

Bucky wrote:
> VS wrote:
>
>> Dubai has no industry, no natural or cultural attractions, just a
>> bunch of shops (for tourists whose idea of a good vacation is a trip
>> to a giant shopping mall), hotels with gold-plated toilets (for the
>> European chavs with more money than sense and their Arab equivalents),
>
>
> Sounds like Las Vegas, which started as nothing in the middle of the
> desert. But now is a huge international tourist attraction. It's just
> shopping, hotels, and casinos.
>

And bankruptcy. Both personal and corporate. It appears some folks can
go bust even with house odds.

In article <1133458982.156299.71650@g44g2000cwa.. com>,
Riaz <riaz.oz@> wrote:

>Not nearly enough to have non stop flights between those cities, yes.
>But certainly enough to operate through a hub like Dubai. Emirates
>operates all their flights nearly full all year around.

Full doesn't mean anything. Horrid British charters shuttling between
the UK and Spanish beaches are packed like sardine cans, yet they go
out of business like clockwork.

>Clearly they
>have the market figured out better than you VS. I don't know why you
>are having so much trouble with this.

I am not having any ``trouble'' with this, I am just laughing at
the folly of some Gulf sheikh deciding to be an airline magnate and
squandering billions on white-elephant airports and mega-planes.
Hey, it's his money :)

>It is possible that you don't
>know much about Emirates and the geography of the market they serve.

If geography mattered, then Iceland would have been the world's biggest
hub - it's sitting right in the middle of the busiest transoceanic
routes. Dubai is the Iceland of Asian air routes, except that
Icelanders are smarter and don't try to become something they can
never be.

>As AJC pointed out, just because a model (hub and spoke) is currently in
>decline in the US does not mean that that same model will not work else
>where.

The US, as always, is ahead of the curve. Europe and the Middle East
are behind. What else is new?

>Emirates will remain the best example of
>a thriving hub and spoke system for years to come.

There has *never* been a viable hub and spoke system where the hub is
not also a major source of O/D business traffic. The only surviving
hub-and-spoke airlines are the ones whose hubs are major business
centers, which Dubai is not and never will be, even with all the camel
races and gold-plated toilets.

In article <1133475496.473526.279510@f14g2000cwb. .com>,
Riaz <riaz.oz@> wrote:

> US legacy carrier are in bankcruptcy protection and are hostage to
> militant unions.

Of course, the most financially successful of the US airlines,
Southwest, also has the most heavily unionized and best-paid labor
group.

Unions are not killing the legacy carriers; that's a total red herring.

beavis wrote:

> In article <1133475496.473526.279510@f14g2000cwb. .com>,
> Riaz <riaz.oz@> wrote:
>
>
>>US legacy carrier are in bankcruptcy protection and are hostage to
>>militant unions.
>
>
> Of course, the most financially successful of the US airlines,
> Southwest, also has the most heavily unionized and best-paid labor
> group.
>
> Unions are not killing the legacy carriers; that's a total red herring.


It might be fair to say that previous commitments to their unions are a
part of the problem. Then again the commitments are mostly the
responsibility of the management. After all it's not their money.

AJC wrote:
> understanding of other markets. Hub and spoke may be stagnating, or
> even dwindling in the US, along with most of their major carriers, but
> in other parts of the world hub and spoke is thriving, and increasing
> as are the airlines that have embraced it.

The term "hub and spoke" is desined differently in the USA. It has a
connotation of all planes arriving at the hub airport at the same time,
allowing a bank of passenger connections and then all planes leaving to
the spokes at the same time.

Southwest also has a hub and spoke system. But its schedule is designed
for the shortest plane turn around time, not the shortest passenger
connecting times. And they won't prevent a direct flight between A and B
because they prefer to feed traffic through C so that frequencies
between A->C and B-> are higher.

Shouthwest has the right balance. Bankrupt airlines didn't have the
right balance and ended up with bloated fleets that were way too
expensive to operate.

In terms of long haul, you're going to have flights from a major airport
to a less major ones. (Such as BA launching LHR-Bangalore). But you're
not going to see minor to minor services except in specific circumstances.

What people forget is that outside the USA, there are very few
"Cincinatti" or "Atlanta" where the airport has traffic that doesn't
match the city. LHR is not just a major hub, but also a major city that
generates much traffic and is an important destination.

London-Sydney non stop might happen, but it will be akin to Concorde
service. Not very profitable, expensive, but great marketing. New York
Singapore hasn't removed the need for one-stop services that can offer
lower rates. It is a premium service with premium cabin and special crews.


With no clear leading airport in middle east, Dubai is spending itself
to "hub of the middle east" status and they seem to be succeeding. There
is a lot of money in middle east and eventually, it will trickle down to
people who will fly commercially. And lets not forget that all muslims
in the world want to go to the Haj at least once in their life.