It has been a love-hate relationship between the Gulf airliners and the European ones, especially the ones from Germany. When the gulf region began to be a hub of airline operations, acting as a low cost stop-over for airlines from South and Far East Asia flying to Europe and USA, the importance of the traditional European hubs of Frankfurt and Paris have been going down. The strengthening, consolidation and expansion of the Gulf airlines operations have also hit a number of European and American airliners.

While Gulf airliners have been buying stake and entering into various agreements with the western airlines, the actions are of the former are closely watched, often with a little discomfort in the western world. In a latest incident, Germany government has blocked the codeshare agreements which Etihad had with Air Berlin, the airline in which it has picked up 29 percent stake. This blocking will affect 34 codeshare flights in the winters, including the 20 most important routes from Berlin Tegel.

The reason given for this blockage is that these codeshare flights violate the Bilateral Air Services Agreement as there is no provision for Etihad operating direct flights to Berlin. As per the agreement, these flights are to be operated for Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, Hamburg Fuhlsbuttel and Munich airports, and from thereon to Berlin, Stuttgart and Nuremberg.

Etihad rejects this contention as it says that flights have been flown to/from Berlin for the last six seasons and disallowing these now is an incorrect and unilateral decision.