Hi, Emirates has relatively little to do with Hadj traffic. Every major European airport has special charters departing with pilgrims direct to Mecca, often operated by weird and wonderful airlines/aircraft that wouldn't normally be visiting that particular airport. Emirates are replacing the A330 on the Glasgow - Dubai (not Bahrain) route for a 777-330 as the demand for that service is so high. Dubai/Abu Dhabi are proving very popular holiday destinations, even for short breaks, in their own right but mostly because Dubai is such a convenient transit point from Britain (Europe) for everywhere to the Far East, Australasia, India and Africa. Please don't be fooled into sterotyping Muslims into Fox News bad guys. The vast majority have no desire whatsoever to live under Taliban-type regimes, and just because they (like me) have no desire to live in 'Margaritaville' doesn't make them bad people either. Regards to all, Alastair > I'm sure a lot of those connections are for pilgrimages to >Mecca. It's why I think a lot of these SW Asian countries buy >so many large A/C....it's a guaranteed market. *************************************** Dr. Alastair T. Gardiner Microbial Photosynthesis Lab 217 Division of Biochemistry & Mol. Biol. Institute of Biomedical & Life Sciences Davidson Building University of Glasgow Glasgow G12 8QQ Scotland Tel. (+44) 141 330 6449 Fax. (+44) 141 330 4620 E-mail. atg3v@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://www.gla.ac.uk/ibls/BMB/rjc/agardiner.html http://www.e-mep.org ************************************** Have a look at my airliner photography at http://airliners.net/search/photo.search?emailsearch=atg3v@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx