Gulf airlines: Ego-trips or essential?

Is an industry, aviation has always attracted the wealthy.Tycoons rarely resist the chance to have their own airline, as Howard Hughes, Aristotle Onassis or Richard Branson are enough to prove, whilst virtually every country in the world proudly flies a national flag carrier, even if it makes a loss in doing so. Little surprise, then, to observe the billions of dollars being poured by Gulf states into the expansion of airline sand airports. Thanks largely to this investment, the MiddleEast is now easily the fastest growing region in the world in terms of air traffic, which in 2006 rose by 16% compared to a global average of 5.1%. But aren’t there just too many fish swimming in too small a pond? Despite the small size of the domestic market in theGulf, there are now at least eight airlines operating fromKuwait, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman alone, with more set