Emirates, Qatar Airways, Etihad: the hub model of the Gulf carriers

Anyone standing at the fence in Frankfurt knows the scene: at midday an A380 with the UAE flag on its tail slides over the threshold, shortly after comes an A350 with the burgundy Oryx, later a 787 in sand tones. Three airlines from a small region that together handle a considerable share of long-haul traffic between Europe and Asia. Behind it is a clear hub model that made Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad Airways big. This article explains how it works, where the three differ and what it means for your everyday spotting.

The Gulf model in one sentence

The Gulf carriers collect travelers from many countries at a single hub in their home country and distribute them from there in all directions. Anyone flying with Emirates from Hamburg to Bangkok does not want to go to Dubai – they only change planes there. You know this principle from hub-and-spoke networks such as that of Lufthansa in Frankfurt. The difference: at Lufthansa, a large share of the passengers comes from the home market. The Gulf states are far too small for that. Their airlines live off capturing traffic between foreign countries.

The sixth freedom: connecting as a product

In aviation, so-called freedoms of the air govern which traffic rights an airline has in a foreign country. The third and fourth freedoms allow flights from the home country abroad and back. If an airline combines both via its hub, the sixth freedom results: it flies passengers from country A via its home country to country B.

The sixth freedom is not explicitly anchored in the 1944 Chicago Convention. It results from the combination of the other two rights and therefore can hardly be restricted in a targeted way. That is exactly what makes it politically contested. Competitors such as Qantas complained early on that connecting airlines from the Gulf and Asia had advantages on the Kangaroo Route between Europe and Australia. Later the competitor became a partner: since spring 2013, Qantas and Emirates have worked closely together.

Freedom	What it allows	Example
3rd freedom	flight from the home country abroad	Dubai – Frankfurt with Emirates
4th freedom	flight from abroad to the home country	Frankfurt – Dubai with Emirates
5th freedom	onward flight between two foreign countries with its own traffic right	Dubai – Milan – New York with Emirates
6th freedom	traffic between two foreign countries via the home country	Frankfurt – Doha – Bangkok with Qatar Airways

Why the model works so well in the Gulf

Location as a raw material

Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi lie in the middle between Europe, Africa, South Asia and East Asia. From there a modern widebody jet reaches large parts of the world without a stopover – Europe just as much as India, Southeast Asia, East Africa or even Australia and the Americas. Many connections via the Gulf are therefore hardly longer than a nonstop flight, if one even exists. For travelers from mid-size cities such as Hamburg or Düsseldorf, a single change in the Gulf often replaces two changes in Europe and Asia.

Widebody jets as the tool

A hub that bundles flows from many continents needs large aircraft. Emirates operates the world’s largest fleet of the Airbus A380 and a large number of Boeing 777-300ERs; in scheduled service the airline flies only widebody jets. Qatar Airways was the launch customer of the A350 and, besides the A350-1000, relies heavily on the 777 and the 787. Etihad is building its fleet around the Boeing 787-9 and the A350-1000. Emirates and Qatar Airways have also ordered the Boeing 777-9, the successor to today’s 777-300ER.

Important here is the lower-deck cargo hold. Every passenger flight carries cargo in addition, and there are dedicated Boeing 777F freighters at Emirates SkyCargo, Qatar Airways Cargo and Etihad Cargo. Cargo stabilizes load factors, especially on routes where passengers alone would not be enough.

The hub as pacemaker

For connecting to work, arrivals and departures must fit together in time. The Gulf hubs therefore work in waves: many flights from Europe land in a tight time window, and shortly afterward connecting flights depart for Asia, Africa and Oceania. How these waves work and why they are so valuable for spotters is explained in the article on hub waves and banking. For passengers, the minimum connection time decides whether a connection can be booked at all.

State, city and airline in the same boat

All three airlines belong directly or indirectly to the state. Emirates is part of the Emirates Group, owned by the Investment Corporation of Dubai; Qatar Airways has been fully state-owned by Qatar since 2013; Etihad has belonged to the holding company ADQ in Abu Dhabi since 2022. In the Gulf, airline, airport and tourism are thought of as a joint project: the hub brings visitors to the city, and stopover offers turn connecting passengers into hotel guests. Opponents see a hidden subsidy in this. In 2016, for example, the big US airlines accused Qatar Airways of having received state aid worth billions – the airline rejected that. Similar accusations were also aimed at Emirates and Etihad. The Gulf carriers for their part point to their efficiency and to the fact that European and American airlines were also supported by their states.

Three airlines, three strategies

The basic principle is the same for all three. In execution, however, they go quite different ways.

Feature	Emirates	Qatar Airways	Etihad Airways
Hub	Dubai International (DXB)	Hamad International, Doha (DOH)	Zayed International, Abu Dhabi (AUH)
First scheduled flight	October 25, 1985	January 1994	November 2003
Alliance	none	oneworld since October 2013	none
Strategy	growth under its own steam, individual partners	alliance plus equity stakes	focus on its own network after the end of the stakes strategy
Fleet focus	A380, 777, A350-900	A350, 777, 787, some A380	787, A350-1000, 777, small A380 fleet
Registration prefix	A6-	A7-	A6-
German destinations (as of October 2026)	FRA, MUC, DUS, HAM	FRA, MUC, BER, DUS, HAM	FRA, MUC, DUS

Emirates: the biggest, which stays on its own

Emirates started in 1985 with two aircraft provided by Pakistan International Airlines and modest start-up capital. Today the Dubai airline is the largest of the three and the model for the whole concept. Emirates grows organically, that is, through its own aircraft and its own routes, and deliberately forgoes an alliance. Instead of membership in Star Alliance, oneworld or SkyTeam, there are targeted partnerships, above all the one with Qantas. In Dubai, the sister airline flydubai complements the network with Boeing 737s to smaller destinations in the region. In the long term, the move of both airlines to the major airport Dubai World Central is planned; a firm date is still pending.

Qatar Airways: alliance and equity stakes

Qatar Airways went a different way and joined oneworld in October 2013 – as the only one of the three. In addition come stakes in other airline groups: with 25.1 percent, Qatar Airways is the largest shareholder of the International Airlines Group, to which British Airways and Iberia belong. The airline also holds shares in the LATAM Airlines Group, for example, and since 2025 in Virgin Australia. The hub moved to the new Doha Hamad Airport in May 2014.

How vulnerable a single hub is was shown by the blockade of Qatar: from June 2017, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt closed their airspace to aircraft from Qatar. Qatar Airways had to reroute numerous routes, many of them over Iranian airspace. The crisis ended only in January 2021 with the Al-Ula agreement.

Etihad: from a stakes network back to the core

Etihad is the youngest of the three. To catch up with the size of its neighbors faster, the airline bought into other companies from 2011: just under 30 percent of Air Berlin, 49 percent of the newly structured Alitalia, plus shares in Jet Airways, Virgin Australia, Air Seychelles and the later Air Serbia. In 2015 this led to the Etihad Airways Partners group. The strategy failed: Air Berlin and Alitalia went insolvent in 2017, and Etihad reported losses in the billions for 2016 and 2017. By the end of 2023, the last of these stakes had been sold or had lapsed through insolvencies. The story of Air Berlin and Etihad’s role is told in the article on the history of Air Berlin.

Today Etihad relies on its own network from Abu Dhabi Airport, which has been called Zayed International since February 2024 and has been handling flights in the new Terminal A since late October 2023. Etihad agreed a codeshare deal with Lufthansa at the end of 2016.

Traffic rights: the bottleneck in Germany

A hub model is only as good as the traffic rights at the endpoints. How often Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad may fly to Germany and which airports they serve is set out in bilateral air services agreements between Germany and the Emirates and Qatar respectively. European network airlines such as the Lufthansa Group long resisted an expansion because connecting traffic via the Gulf takes passengers to Asia away from them.

You can see the consequences directly in the schedule. As of October 2026, Emirates flies to Frankfurt, Munich, Düsseldorf and Hamburg. In September 2026, Germany and the Emirates agreed on a fifth German destination for UAE airlines, reportedly with Berlin in mind. Qatar Airways already serves five German airports including Berlin Brandenburg; according to industry observers, the agreement with Qatar is thus largely exhausted. Etihad flies to Frankfurt, Munich and Düsseldorf.

Because the number of frequencies is limited, the Gulf carriers like to use large aircraft on their Germany routes. More seats per permitted flight – that is one of the reasons Emirates uses the A380 on several German routes.

What the model means for spotters

Reliable widebody jets at German airports

For spotters in Germany, the three Gulf carriers are a stroke of luck: they bring almost exclusively widebody jets and usually fly their routes daily, on important routes several times a day. Because the departures in Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi are timed to the hub waves, the aircraft often land in Europe in similar time windows. When long-haul jets typically arrive and depart is described in the article on long-haul arrival times in Europe. Still, check the current arrival time every day, because delays and type swaps are normal.

Good places for the Gulf jets are the Zeppelinheim viewing platform in Frankfurt, the Munich Airport visitors’ hill (Besucherhügel), the Düsseldorf observation deck and the Affenfelsen in Hamburg. Which side of the runway has the better light depends on time of day and runway direction in use.

Telling types apart

The Gulf fleets are an ideal practice ground for type recognition. The difference between Airbus’s double-decker and the Boeing 747 is explained in the guide Telling the A380 and 747 apart. At Qatar Airways and Etihad, it is worth looking at the cockpit windows: the A350’s “raccoon mask” helps you tell it from the 787 – more in A350 or Boeing 787?. And if you hesitate over a large twinjet, you will find the right features in Telling the Boeing 777 and 787 apart.

Spotting while connecting

Because the model is based on connecting passengers, as a traveler you almost inevitably end up at the hubs. There you see, in a short time, a density of widebody jets that hardly exists in Europe. At Dubai Airport, Emirates A380s and 777s shape the apron; in Doha, the A350s and 777s of Qatar Airways. How to turn a connection into a spotting stop is in the article Spotting while connecting. Important: in the Emirates and in Qatar, strict rules apply to photography. Read Photography at airports in the UAE and the guide to plane spotting in Dubai beforehand, and follow every instruction on site.

Competition and the future of the model

The Gulf model is not without competition. Turkish Airlines pursues a similar principle at Istanbul Airport and has the advantage that many European cities can be reached with narrowbody jets. At the same time, efficient long-haul jets such as the A350 and 787 make nonstop flights economical between cities that used to be linked only by a connection. The nonstop ultra-long-haul flights, for example between Europe and Australia, also target exactly the connecting traffic the Gulf carriers serve today.

The three’s answer so far is more capacity and more comfort: new cabins, the Boeing 777-9 in the order books of Emirates and Qatar Airways and, in Dubai, the expansion of Dubai World Central into one of the largest airports in the world. The 2026 crisis, however, has also shown how strongly the model depends on open airspace in the region.

Conclusion

Emirates, Qatar Airways and Etihad turned a small region into a hub of world air traffic. Their success rests on the location between the continents, on the sixth freedom, on large long-haul fleets and on tightly timed hubs. The three differ mainly in how they grow: Emirates alone, Qatar Airways with oneworld and equity stakes, Etihad, after the failure of its stakes network, again focused on its own network. The model is limited by traffic rights and, as seen in 2017 and 2026, by political crises in the region. How the three fit into the big alliances is explored further in the overview of Star Alliance, oneworld and SkyTeam.