Airline industry expert Prof. Rob Britton: “Accounting gimmicks and hard realities at Etihad Airways”

Forensic accountants recently showed that the $103 million profit that Etihad Airways claimed for its 2015 fiscal year was actually an operating loss of $2.06 billion; worse, that result was after Etihad’s government owners kicked in $1.7 billion in subsidies. Those poor results followed an operating loss of $1.4 billion and subsidies of $2.6 billion in its 2014 fiscal year.

That news came on the heels of Qatar Airways’ bogus financial results for fiscal year 2017, in which the airline claimed profits of nearly $540 million but according to investigators actually lost $703 million, nearly doubling its operating loss from the previous year. And that on top of FY 2017 state subsidies of $491 million. As the baseball legend Yogi Berra once said, “It’s déjà vu all over again.”