I'll keep this short. Canada manages air transport agreements with the UAE, Qatar and Turkey.

The Canada-UAE bilateral dates to 2001, and was finally liberalized in 2018. By 2003, each country was allotted 6 weekly flights apiece, with a per-airline maximum of 3 weekly.

Canada did not allow flights from Turkey until 2009, and from Qatar until 2011. An agreement was reached with Qatar that year for three weekly flights apiece, but unfortunately the treaty text is not available online. This treaty was also liberalized in 2018.

Peter MacKay, the then defence minister, visited Turkey in 2009, the first official visit from a Canadian politician in six years. This paved the way for a bilateral ATA, as well as a double taxation agreement. This ATA is not online either (grrr) but someone on FlyerTalk summarized it: 3 weekly apiece in 2009, up to 5 weekly in 2012, 9 weekly in 2013.

The 2016 coup attempt resulted in a pullback from Air Canada, but in 2020 the bilateral was increased to 12 weekly allowing IST-YVR to happen...then COVID happened.

This is unlike the US, which has full open skies agreements with the UAE, Qatar and Turkey, allowing supercarriers to have unlimited flights into the US, and vice versa.

Emirates and Etihad are not part of an airline alliance, so the US3 can't leverage connections in DXB/AUH like how Delta can in AMS/CDG, or United in FRA. Until very recently, AA had no presence in the Middle East or South Asia, and did not codeshare with Qatar Airways in oneworld. Nor does United codeshare with Turkish. Or for that matter, SQ (ANA is United's Asian partner), Thai (since Thailand lost its FAA category 1 rating), or even Air India (United didn't want Air India in Star Alliance in the first place).

All this means that US3 flights to the Middle East, Turkey or South Asia became nearly nonexistent by the mid 2010s. According to US airlines, this was due to the state-subsidized supercarriers flooding the market, enabled by open skies agreements.

I thought it would be an interesting thought experiment to see what would happen if the US also regulated bilaterals with supercarriers, like Canada does. What routes would the supercarriers fly, and what routes would the US3 fly? Could something like the old Pacific network at NRT be feasible, using DXB or IST as a hub with fifth-freedom flights to the rest of the Gulf, or maybe India or north Africa? Or, would the US3 lean more on their European partners?

I'm having trouble following your questions, so let me say this: the US does regulate bilaterals if a non-open skies policy exists, so wouldn't the easy answer be to look up what the agreement was between US & Qatar/UAE before open skies was signed?

Turkey: I'm in the camp that doesn't include them as an after thought to the ME3. Turkey has enough O&D to justify their own flights and dare I say- TK's existence.

If you want to know what the world was like before the ME3 , I'll take you back to the 80's when KU operated JFK-KWI (3x via LHR, 1x via FRA) with 747's. Having flown the transatlantic sector numerous times with them I can tell you that 90% of the KWI traffic was actually transit to BOM/DEL which is really what the ME3 is all about now.

Yep, once India allowed transits recently, then suddenly those empty Middle East-US flights filled up again. The meal options (in Economy anyway) are skewed towards Indian cuisine as the Indian sub-continent is the bread-and-butter for the Middle Eastern airlines. With no open skies to the USA, my guess is those passengers would avoid the Middle Eastern hubs and probably fly via Europe.

eta unknown wrote:

I'm having trouble following your questions, so let me say this: the US does regulate bilaterals if a non-open skies policy exists, so wouldn't the easy answer be to look up what the agreement was between US & Qatar/UAE before open skies was signed?

Turkey: I'm in the camp that doesn't include them as an after thought to the ME3. Turkey has enough O&D to justify their own flights and dare I say- TK's existence.

If you want to know what the world was like before the ME3 , I'll take you back to the 80's when KU operated JFK-KWI (3x via LHR, 1x via FRA) with 747's. Having flown the transatlantic sector numerous times with them I can tell you that 90% of the KWI traffic was actually transit to BOM/DEL which is really what the ME3 is all about now.

I'll try rephrasing.

Before COVID, US carriers didn't have many Middle East or India flights, instead letting the ME4 or codeshare connections (e.g. AA/QR, UA/TK) take all that connecting traffic. What if they took a page out of Canada's book and limited bilaterals such that US airlines could compete?

I'll give Air Canada as an example. The Canadian government did not give the UAE full Open Skies rights because they wanted Air Canada to compete with Emirates and Etihad. They also didn't want EK/EY hogging up all the connecting traffic between southern Ontario and India. Limiting the UAE to six flights a week, with no one airline having more than three weekly flights, allowed Air Canada to build up its MENASA network from YYZ and YUL: YYZ-DXB, YYZ-DEL, YYZ-BOM among others. Emirates was able to fly 3 weekly A380s to YYZ and Etihad got 3 weekly 77Ws (formerly 346s) to YYZ.

While I have praised the ME4 for their superior hard and soft product to Air Canada's, I will begrudgingly admit that keeping them out of YVR has allowed for a more diverse array of longhaul carriers, and is better for YVR as a whole. On the Atlantic side we got BA (including A380s in summer), LH (including MUC in summer), KLAF, LX in summer; on the Pacific side there's JL, NH, CX, KE, CA/MU/CZ, BR/CI, MF, 3U, JD, HU, before the Hong Kong crisis we had HX as well. And eventually a nonstop YVR-DEL flight, though it took until more 787-9s arrived in 2016 to make it viable. I doubt it would have been this diverse if Emirates or Etihad were allowed to have daily/double daily A380s or 77Ws to YVR.

Let's say the US negotiated bilaterals with the UAE and Qatar, and just for the sake of argument, Turkey. (given TK's connections to Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and subsaharan Africa/southern Indian Ocean destinations like MRU/SEZ/ADD/JNB/CPT/DUR...) Which US destinations would Emirates choose given limited bilaterals? How about Etihad, or Qatar Airways? Which MENASA (= Middle East, North Africa, South Asia) destinations would United have if there weren't multiple daily ME4 77Ws/A380s serving SFO/LAX/ORD/EWR/IAH? Ditto with Delta if the ME4 didn't have unlimited rights to ATL/SEA/JFK, or American with ORD/JFK/DFW/MIA.

Also, would it be possible for the US3 to have bases in DXB, AUH, DOH or IST for 5th freedom hops, much like United and Northwest's Pacific networks pre-2008 GFC? Say just as examples:

UA901/902 ORD-DXB-BOM
UA903/904 SFO-DXB-BLR
UA905/906 SEA-DXB-DEL
UA907/908 IAD-DXB-KWI

Likewise, Istanbul could be used as a UA forward hub. EWR-IST-BLR, SFO-IST-MRU, IAD-IST-ADD, the possibilities are endless.

This is all assuming the QR/AA/AS tie-up didn't happen, of course!

IMO you're overthinking this scenario.
What destinations would the US3 serve in the ME? Aside from maybe Saudi Arabia (RUH/DMM)... zero. It's not about the AUH/DXB/DOH- there's very little traffic. You can't compare it with NRT which is a completely different situation in terms of demand.
Could they establish a hub in DXB for expensive and uneconomic tag on sectors? They could- but why would they- see above- ME3 is transit traffic (and a bit of a detour for India).
However, USA-IST will return. IST hub is not an option- I doubt Turkey would give the traffic rights (I do recall PA operating some beyond IST flights- remember the days when airfares were high and not trash like now- which partly answers why the ME3 carry the bulk of US-India traffic and the US3 aren't that interested.)

ME3 to USA if restricted: NYC + whatever destinations have significant Indian/Pakistani communities. See first point above.

Note: IMO AC's DXB flight is a clever way of preventing EK expansion. Now if EK wants more flights AC can say 'look how many pax flew AC to DXB- and look how many of those pax were interlined for on-carriage to India- now you have evidence to deny the request'.

I don't think there's an easy answer to this question, without knowing the exact criteria that the US would use to determine how much service the ME3/TK can be allowed to offer to the US in a hypothetical scenario where there are no open skies. Air service agreements are in essence trade agreements that involve multiple lobbies and stakeholders, and I think that said criteria could change based on what the governing party's priorities are at the time. Having said that, the airlines probably have the loudest voice, since they are the actual direct beneficiaries of the conferments afforded from ASAs. I think that they would push the US government to only grant the ME3/TK enough access to the point where the US3 would reciprocally be awarded enough traffic rights that can fulfill their ambitions in the corresponding markets (which, even at the height of US military activity in the surrounding region and ensuing government contracts, only yielded a comparatively limited amount of service from the US3 to the Middle East.)