UA to cease IAD-KWI/BAH effective Jan 13, 2016

[FWAAA]

With the drawdown of the US military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, this route cancellation may be a natural progression, but someone on Flyertalk noted the wording of the UA statement and wondered whether Kuwait is tossing UA due to the DOT's ruling against Kuwait Airways on the discrimination case involving its refusal to sell tickets to holders of Israeli passports on flights between the USA and London.

http://airlineroute.net/2015/10/21/ua-kwibah-jan16/

Brian Sumers of Aviation Week (formerly of the Los Angeles Daily News group) received a twitter communication with the odd wording:
 

https://twitter.com/BrianSumers/status/656888764262973441
 
Bahrain has been open skies since 1999, and USA-Kuwait has been open skies since 2006, so the mention of both governments is sorta odd-sounding.  
 
I don't usually subscribe to the wacky conspiracy theories, but this conspiracy theory isn't quite as wacky as some of them.  

 

[eolesen]

My understanding is that this is retaliation, not something UA planned on.

 

[WorldTraveler]

if so, it further validates that Middle East carriers do not intend to play by established rules of the industry and will make their own rules as they go.

It is not likely that UA was making a ton of money to these cities but politics and retaliation should never enter into what other carriers can do.

 

[robbedagain]

E  if that is truly in retaliationI can only imagine that the US might take a retalitory action and not allow the 2 carriers to expand in the US????

 

[eolesen]

With DL killing off DXB, I'm going to have to admit that the retaliation theory was wrong. Perhaps with all the CEO related issues going on, UA forgot to get out in front of the story.

They've since come back to a couple of the bloggers and social media folks and said it was a planned exit due to softness in the market.