Qantas attacks Emirates 'fiction' :: CNN

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Qantas chairwoman Margaret Jackson said Wednesday that Emirates was 100 percent owned by the government of Dubai. "To suggest that Emirates is competing on similar terms as commercially-run airlines like Qantas is, quite frankly, fiction," she said.

Jackson said government ownership provided a sovereign risk rating that allowed Emirates to carry debt levels far higher than publicly listed carriers such as Qantas. She said Emirates paid no company tax in Dubai, and its chairman, Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al-Maktoum, was a member of the ruling family and head of the Dubai Department of Civil Aviation, which ran Dubai Airport. "As Qantas has observed before, life must be wonderfully simple when the airline, government and airport interests are all controlled by the same people," Jackson said.

Emirates President Tim Clark, who has been in Australia for this week's Melbourne Cup horse race -- sponsored by Emirates -- said the airline wanted to double its flights in and out of Australia from 42 to 84.

That has evoked a furious response from Qantas. . . .

Australian consumers were not reached for comment.