Emirates New York To Milan Flight Canceled?

So much for people trying to shut down Emirates because of that route!

Lucky, maybe Assaereo did try to stop it when it started, but it just took this long to work its way through the bureaucracy and the court system. I imagine those are just as slow in Italy as they are here, maybe even slower.

The European airlines probably can't survive without this legislation.

as a consumer, it's great to have another cheap flight and award redemption option.

but the flight was never about saving fuel. it has always been about siphoning traffic from incumbents (AZ, DL, AA, UA from EWR).

NYC-MXP already has 4 carriers from 3 alliances. There's no shortage of competition and choices that can boost the argument for EK.

Emirates route authority is valid for 18 months. The route is safe through spring 2015. The ruling says that Emirates cannot renew the authority.

@ Mark - thanks for the info!

The ruling actually sets a very dangerous precedent and should almost certainly be overturned if appealed high enough. The US and EU rely on a lot of international goodwill to approve the anti-trust immunity agreements of major EU/US carriers and bilateral open skies agreements that the US has pioneered (such as the one with the UAE) are the driver of this goodwill. If this degenerates into a tit-for-tat battle, this could set a lot of alliances and regulatory regimes back a decade.

I think it is very doubtful that EK can be successful on this route. A few years ago, they have already tried a one-stop, from Dubai to JFK via Hamburg / Germany. The flight was discontinued because there were simply not enough passengers and the competition with the former Continental was very hard. Good for the passengers - bad for the airlines.
Although Milan is a larger market, but the competition is even tougher.

Emirates used to have a JFK-HAM-DXB flight a few years ago in addition to having two nonstop JFK-DXB flights back before the great recession. After the introduction of the A380 in 2008 and the great recession, EK stopped the JFK-HAM-DXB route. I do not recall the Germans or EU having an issue with the JFK-HAM flight back then though.

@Joey : HAM-NYC was only served by CO back then (HAM-EWR, and I think with a tiny 752). HAM-JFK as an airport pair was completely unserved. So EK's service actually was incremental and beneficial.

Contrast that to NYC-MXP, where there are 5 airlines from all 3 alliances including EK.

I have no doubt alitalia's new partner etihad is pushing this as well. Alitalia will never be profitable so of course they will stop this. Bad for consumers and worse for the Italian people who have to support Alitalia.

Interesting...
I flew the MXP-DXB flight on EK recently and I have to say it was an interesting flight.
Boarding began 2 hours later, occupancy on that part of the flight wasn't high at all (probably about 40%) and mostly it had an akward time (redeye).
We boarded passing through business class and I have to say: not impressed at all. It looked more like premium economy than business. It had 2-3-2 angle-flat seats.

So yeah, a pretty strange route in each case.

!Jowy

EWR-HAM supports a PMCO 752 today. I suspect EK was flying a slightly larger plane in 2008.

Alitalia CAN be profitable, it's not inherently bad. It's just terribly managed. Milan should be the hub and not Rome.

You are wrong.
Milan is a much larger and wealthier market. Emirates is the best and handles competition beautifully and IS very successful.
Milan is the richest Euro city after London and Paris and has 10 million residents as well as huge fashion/medical/business conference traffic and a lot of tourism (but it does not depend on it). No comparison with Hamburg.

Probably it was late in DXB. MXP is an amazing airport. It's not a strage route and they fly it with an A380 now.