Chris Daniels: Emirates hub too hush-hush for words

COMMENT

Hoary old rumours or a visionary insight into an ambitious, global aviation hub soon to be built in Auckland?

Air NZ chief executive Ralph Norris, giving evidence before the Australian Competition Tribunal on Wednesday, said he was in possession of confidential information that the Dubai-based airline Emirates was planning to establish a major international hub right here in Auckland.

An Air NZ spokesman yesterday said the company would not add to Norris' comments. Emirates managers in Dubai were looking at the comments before responding.

So what information could Norris have, that a rival airline, admittedly with ambitious global expansion plans, is keen on building a huge aviation hub at the most distant point of its network?

Reports of a hub first began circulating in late February, when Australian journalist Geoffrey Thomas said in an emailed aviation newsletter that Emirates was "investigating the feasibility" of the idea.

Without citing any source, Thomas said Emirates was "looking at services from Auckland to Fiji, Los Angeles/San Francisco and Buenos Aires as part of a major South Pacific expansion that would give it round-the-world capability".

He then went on to say Emirates was going to use its new flights to Australia and New Zealand to "draw Australian passengers onto its South Pacific network".

And until Norris' revelation in Sydney this week, that's as far as it went, with no more details of any such hub or South Pacific network, coming to light.

While Norris is presumably using the prospect of an Emirates hub as a way of gaining support for the anti-competitive alliance with Qantas, the potential gains for New Zealand of such a development are huge.

Our tourism, aircraft engineering, construction and service industries would undoubtedly get a massive boost from more Dubai money flowing into New Zealand.

If Norris had been able to share his confidential Emirates information with our Commerce Commission last year, these multimillion-dollar benefits could have been assessed when making its decision to reject his plan for the Qantas alliance.

In a February interview, Emirates group managing director Maurice Flanagan said the airline had no plans to fly between Auckland and the United States soon.

This came after an enthusiastic description of numerous other expansion opportunities around the globe. Emirates has yet to even fly to the United States, though will begin flying to New York next month.

Flanagan referred to new options for New Zealand travellers with the launch of a nonstop Dubai-Auckland service. Emirates would link Auckland and New York, not across the Pacific - but through its Dubai hub.

All signs point to Norris being either dead wrong or scare-mongering on this matter, but, for the sake of the New Zealand economy, let's hope he's right.