As the emirate of Dubai helds its biennial international airshow last month, travelers from anywhere but a major city were feeling first hand the pressures against a robust regional-airline industry in the Arab world. Despite a handful of exceptions, such as Dubai and Beirut, very few airports in the region offer “Open Skies,” a circumstance perhaps more than any other that thwarts any meaningful competition and, thus, an environment demanding of varied service options. And with little scope for internal services from new domestic operators (only a handful of genuine regional airlines exist throughout the whole area), aircraft salesmen have a hard row to hoe in placing turboprop or small-jet equipment with fewer than 100 seats into the Arab market.
Rather, the air-transport industry in the Gulf, the Middle East and North Africa
remains subject to transport regulations that almost always involve the application of
bilateral air-service agreements between pairs of nations or states. Typically, this involves the designation of government-owned (flag carrier) airlines as the only carriers allowed to fly between (usually) capital or other specified principal airports, and subject to strictly limited frequencies and seat numbers.
