By Stefano Virgilli — There is no doubt that Middle East countries take pride in their airplane national fleet. And as the time went by, from the year 2000 onwards, a sort of a competition took place. The main benefits went to Boeing, which saw an unprecedented growth in the volume of business and profit. At first, the Middle East accounted for a small fraction of Boeing revenues, but nowadays it has become such an important component of the business model, that the airplane manufacturer fears that a slowdown could badly impact the company.
Among the main airlines in the region, Emirates, Qatar Airways and more recently Etihad constitute the largest share of the airplanes market. Lets take for example a very popular plane such as the Airbus A380.
In 2016 there were 207 units of A380 flying all over the world. A total 107 airplanes were owned by Middle Eastern airlines. The remaining 100 were distributed globally. In other words, 3 airlines alone operated 51.7 per cent of all the Airbus A380 available on the market.
Another long haul model, the 777-300ER, saw a growth from 10 units only available in the Middle East in 2005, to 213 taking off from our region in 2016. A growth of 20 times over a decade.
As Boeing keeps aiming for growth, the target of $100 billion revenues can be achieved only by continuing supplying airplanes to the GCC, which has become something much more than just a strategic market to the American multinational airplane designer and manufacturer.
In order to avoid causing a negative impact on sales of the existing model 777-300ER, Boeing strategically held back the new model 777-9. The strategy could pay back, as many airlines have been waiting impatiently for the launch of the new model.
However, from the sneak peek offered by Boeing, Some industry experts say that the new 777-9 could be more oriented towards performance rather than towards comfort.
Qatar Airways and Emirates Airlines have been on a long journey competing against each other. As of today, Emirates stands at AED 67 billion in revenues with income in excess of AED 2 billion.
On the other hand, Qatar Airways announced revenues for QAR 35 billion and a profit of about QAR 3 billion.
Etihad scored a record 41 per cent profit growth back in 2015. Last year closed $9 billion in revenues. Etihad has consolidated a number of international partnerships, bringing the airline from Abu Dhabi much closer to Europe and to the rest of the world.
In terms of destinations reached, both Qatar and Emirates are fairly comparable to approximately 150 destinations each, while Etihad, after a few changes to the list of available destinations, settled at more than 100.
All of the three airlines have been sponsoring generously around the world with particular attention to football. Qatar airways seem to have a very fresh and innovative way of communicating. They were the first airline who managed to shoot a “non-boring” safety video.
Qatar tapped on the alliance with the Spanish football team Barcelona featuring football players within the safety video and played most of the scenes in a stadium. Other scenes perfectly illustrate the safety procedure without necessarily been obvious.
For instance, in the Qatar Airways safety video, unlike all the others, the oxygen masks are released to a group of ecstatic women at the sight of their football idol Gerard Pique.
The aviation business has become a branding game. Those who manage to tickle the imagination of their customers are the airlines that are growing.
However, the costs involved in managing an airline are enormous and some well-placed marketing campaign cannot solve all the issues of one of the most expensive-to-run industries in the world.
However, bad communication experiences can generate a huge loss like United Airlines experienced just a few weeks ago. In one day the company lost $1 billion of capitalisation.
Meanwhile, Boeing keeps wishing eternal growth for the Middle East carriers because the market has become too dependent on our region. The title recently took off and flew higher than ever and the quarterly announcement showed a growth of 5 per cent.
However, not all the growth come from civil aviation, in fact, Boeing recently closed some military deals with the US government for over $5 billion.
— vs.voxlab.net@gmail.com
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