IATA AGM: Hogan stops en route to call on Canada to allow greater access for UAE

Etihad chief eecutive James Hogan made a vital diversion en route to this week's IATA AGM in Singapore and stopped in Canada to urge the authorities there to keep an open mind on open skies

Speaking to the Toronto Board of Trade on Friday Hogan steered clear of politics but said opening the skies over Canada would be good for everyone. "We are no threat to Canadian airlines or to Canadian aviation," he said. "We come in peace, as the Martians like to say."

Hogan follows representatives from the UAE government which has been trying unsuccessfully to negotiate a deal to allow Emirates Airline and Etihad to expand their services to Canada. Existing flights are said to be achieving capacity levels in excess of 90 per cent. But Canada remains unmoved, thanks mainly to opposition from Air Canada which has said it is not in the national carrier's, nor the country's commercial interest to grant further landing rights.

The issue between the Gulf carriers and Air Canada came to a head last year at the IATA AGM in Berlin when the leadership of the three main Gulf carriers: Hogan, Emirates' Tim Clark and Qatar's Akbar AL Baker pressed the Air Canda management during an open session.later in the year the UAE closed a Canadian military base outside Dubai and raised the cost of visas for Canadians travelling to the country.

Hogan spoke to the Canadian news agency Postmedia News after his presentation and said, Etihad had expanded its services into other underserved cities in countries such as Australia, which was initially also reluctant to allow additional flights. The move did not ultimately impact the country's national carriers.

He said Etihad favoured bilateral partnerships to "isolationism" and argued more landing rights would be good for trade and tourism in both Canada and the UAE. In particular, he said new services would make it easier for travellers from emerging markets in the Middle East to visit or work in Canada.

"Etihad is sourcing its traffic from markets where total demand is growing and from many markets that nobody else flies from," he told the agency. "There is no difference between Etihad leveraging growing markets on its doorstep and Canadian carriers sourcing traffic from the USA over its Canadian hubs into Europe."

The issue looks likely to raise its head again at the Singapore AGM this week.