“Within three hours flying time of the Gulf, you have the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, verging on China. It’s a huge market,” explains James Hogan, a former chief executive of Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways. He ran the carrier for 11 years – from 2006-2017 – overseeing a period of rapid expansion for the company, which began operations in 2003.
“The Gulf carriers were able to build a very strong network, not only of hub cities, capital cities – but also the major secondary cities and third cities, which enabled one-stop flying,” he says.
Andrew Charlton, managing director of consultants Aviation Advocacy agrees. “The Gulf is just in that place where, with the current technology, you can get to practically anywhere on Earth,” he says.
And so, in the early years of the century, that put the region’s airlines in an ideal position to take advantage of rapid growth in markets such as China and India, which he believes European and American carriers initially overlooked.
“The Middle East was suddenly in exactly the right place for the emerging market, which was well east of the Atlantic,” he says.
The Gulf carriers, as relative newcomers to the industry, were also able to invest in modern fleets ideally suited to the kind of model they were building. Initially, the twin-engine Boeing 777 was favoured for its 300-seat capacity and range of more than 7,000 nautical miles, while later, the Airbus A380 superjumbo also became a useful tool for carrying more than 500 passengers to and from congested airports where take-off and landing slots were scarce.
“The major differentiator was starting with a clean sheet of paper. That was the secret sauce,” explains Mr Hogan. “You were able to create a service proposition that couldn’t be matched by carriers in more traditional markets, whether that be the USA, Europe or Australasia.”
