Source: The Australian Author: Steve Creedy 11/06/2007
Subject Concerned: Government Opinion Airlines
Moves by regional trade blocs such as ASEAN and the European Union to negotiate open skies agreements would be "absolutely barmy" and bad news for countries outside those groups, Emirates executive vice-chairman Maurice Flanagan has said.
Speaking during a visit to Australia, he described the possibility of multilateral air services currently being mooted in ASEAN and other forums as a "horror sort of hovering".
He said countries outside Europe found some destinations, for example Germany and the UK to be fairly liberal while others, such as France, were the opposite.
An agreement between blocs would be "absolutely barmy".
"Like a convoy in wartime, each bloc could only move at the speed of its slowest ship, its slowest country in aeropolitical terms," Mr Flanagan said.
"The law of unintended consequences would come into play and what we would have with multilateral blocs is bilaterals writ large but worse.
"It wouldn't be much use to anybody, even inside those blocs I imagine."
Despite the talk, Mr Flanagan said he believed such multilateral agreements would be too hard to negotiate. But he agreed the industry needed to liberalise, noting that the basic rules covering bilateral aviation agreements were written when only 8 million people were flying each year.
There were now 2.5 billion passengers, growing at 5 per cent per year, and the current rules were no longer appropriate.
"The aeropolitical structure that airlines have to work within is a 1960s -- at best -- structure, even 1940s," he said.
"It just is not appropriate to the modern world."
Mr Flanagan would not detail Emirates' plans for Australia in detail, saying that the airline's chairman, Sheik Ahmed bin Saeed Al-Maktoum, would address the issue during a visit.
However, he poured cold water on suggestions Emirates was interested in taking some, or all, of Toll Holdings' stake in Virgin Blue.
"We've discussed that internally but, no, I think we've got problems enough without that," he said.
The Emirates executive also said the Dubai-based carrier would be interested in routes between Australia and the US if an open skies regime was introduced, but it was not pushing for that to happen.