Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad all three follow a somewhat identical concept - to turn their sleepy homebase into a thriving hub that offers connections from Europe (and to some extent North America) to Australasia. What are your views - is there sufficient room for all three to succeed or will Emirates in the end crush the smaller competitors ? What are Etihad's and Qatar's chances to diffentiate themselves from much larger Emirates when over time their respective route networks will more or less mirror each other ? Do you think that even at the astonishing growth rate of all three airlines demand will increase sufficiently that all three will have no problems filling their planes ? Will there possibly even be a fourth global player in the region sometime in the future, e.g. Gulf Air through Bahrain or one of the new Indian carriers ?


P.S.: I know that we had a EK vs. EY debate recently, but it focused very much on the US routes and did not take QR into consideration.