Interview: Etihad CEO Downplays Rivals' Complaints to Focus on the 'Long Game'

James Hogan, the CEO of Etihad Airways, sat in a second-floor board room at an upscale New York hotel last Friday and was impeccably dressed, confident, and incredulous at what he considers to be a "local issue," namely the allegations from Delta, American and United in the name of Open Skies that the Abu Dhabi-based carrier is running roughshod over the three legacy airlines. Asked whether the three carriers' Open Skies complaint, under review by the U.S. government, has been losing momentum, Hogan tells Skift: "You know, I run a global airline based in Abu Dhabi and we operate in six continents in the world. We've have challenges in every continent. Quite frankly, we've tackled this. We've addressed it properly and thoroughly and I'm more focused on the day-to-day issues at a point in time. "The [Obama] administration, State, Commerce, and Transport have all said they'll come out with the appropriate guidelines," Hogan says. "When they do, we'll take it from there. We haven't damaged the U.S. airlines, which is what they've said we've done. We provide fantastic connectivity to the USA. We've introduced product that is unique but we're still 0.0006 percent of the seats out of America." "Give me a break." Hogan was in New York to mark the arrival of the A380 and the opening of an Etihad lounge at JFK, part of what he sees as engendering an end-to end hospitality-focused experience that Etihad views as its mission to deliver. Whether Etihad, along with rivals Emirates and Qatar Airways, are unfairly disrupting legacy airlines in the U.S. and Europe is open to debate. But what's clear is that Etihad's strategy to eschew alliances in favor of its penchant to invest in carriers, including Alitalia, Jet Airways, airberlin, Air Serbia, and Air Seychelles, to expand Etihad's network, create shared services and achieve economies of scale, is indeed ruffling feathers among regulators and rivals. Hogan adamantly says he'd welcome the first U.S. carrier to fly regularly to Abu Dhabi but he'll have to be satisfied with Etihad's codeshare with American and JetBlue in the interim. Hogan appears to be taking it all in stride, though, explaining several times that he's got bigger issues to be concerned with in running a global airline than competitors' angst, and that this is "a long game." Skift discussed these competitive issues with Hogan, and also listened to his views about the ways Etihad is bringing innovation to the passenger experience.