United States will be Battleground for Gulf Carriers and Airline Alliances
Abu Dhabi, October 2, 2012: Qatar Airways leads the Middle East’s three super carriers in ontime performance, while Emirates maintains its advantage on network scale and destinations served, according to the latest research from masFlight, operations data analysis partner of OAG.
Speaking today at an OAG-hosted presentation at the World Route Development Forum in Abu Dhabi, UAE, masFlight’s CEO Josh Marks said: “According to masFlight’s comparative data analysis, Qatar Airways is currently leading the Gulf’s ‘superconnectors’ in ontime performance. However, when it comes to global network footprint and connectivity, Emirates still enjoys a clear advantage.
“However, Emirates, Qatar and Etihad are all still in the infancy of their network expansion and the competition they present to airline alliances is increasing. The key route expansion opportunities for Gulf carriers are with the United States, overflying European hubs. We can therefore expect to see an accelerating ‘land grab’ by Middle East airlines, especially for neutral airports like Boston’s Logan International, and for US hubs with a European focus, such as Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County, Miami International and Philadelphia International.”
Regarding the airline alliances, masFlight’s analysis shows that oneworld needs to add member airlines to compete effectively with Star Alliance and SkyTeam. Marks said: “Star Alliance has by far the greatest network reach, with top coverage across the 1,000 major global markets. In contrast, SkyTeam’s strength is efficiency: its strong, centralised hubs give the alliance great geographic reach through fewer flights that Star. Trailing the pack is oneworld, which, while competitive in key cities and market pairs, needs new members to increase its coverage globally.”
masFlight is a leading analytics platform for aviation, combining global flight information with weather, airport, fleet and economic data. At the World Route Development Forum yesterday, masFlight and OAG, the market leader in airline schedule data, announced a new partnership to jointly develop operations data analysis tools to enable airlines and airports to understand their own and competitors’ operational performance.
Josh Marks’ World Route Development Forum presentation, ‘Alliance Network Coverage and Ontime Performance’, may be accessed here.
