❊ MEA Wants To Deprive You Of Cheap Flights To Beirut

MEA is trying to blame cheap flights from the gulf for its woes. The government shouldn’t listen and should push it to be more competitive.

Middle East Airlines (MEA) chairman Mohammad Al Hout is trying to explain why his carrier is losing money. He is blaming cheap flights that are competing “unfairly” with the Lebanese national carrier.

Hout stressed that even some leading foreign and Arab airlines were also concerned with the unfair competition posed by some airways that were being fully subsidized by their governments and this runs against the true concept of fair and open competition.

Some of Mr. Hout’s complaints, like those related to the principle of reciprocity, are fair. It doesn’t make sense that Turkish Airlines finds it easy to land in Beirut’s RHI airport when the Turkish aviation authority gives MEA trouble with landing slots.

But what’s really ticking Mr. Hout are those cheap flights you get from Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Qatar and KSA to Beirut. According to Mr. Hout, airlines like Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways are unfairly subsidized by oil-rich governments, and should somehow be controlled so that MEA can restore its profitability.

Translation: let’s limit those flights so that travelers from the gulf will be obliged to pay high rates for MEA tickets.

The government shouldn’t listen to Mr. Hout. Cheap tickets are encouraging Lebanese in the gulf to fly often to Beirut for vacations and long weekends. Those Lebanese come and spend money in the country, and it would be foolish to push them away by making it more expensive for them to come home. It is short sighted to think of MEA’s profitability at the expense of the larger picture (If the Lebanese consumer pays less for tickets, he’ll have more to spend on Lebanese goods and services).

Instead of whining about unfairness and trying to distort the playing field, MEA should focus on improving its horrible customer service and trimming its cost to become more competitive. Perhaps then some people will decide it’s okay to pay higher ticket prices for its services.

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