The CEO of Emirates teased merger speculation with Etihad in 2017. Etihad’s CEO teased it last year. The two airlines have been cooperating more closely. Etihad is lending pilots to Emirates.

Now Emirates Chairman Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum is speaking out about the possibility of a merger – and suggesting it could happen in the future, but not right away. (HT: Paddle Your Own Kanoo) He spoke to CNN at the Arabian Travel Market in Dubai last week:

We’ve been cooperating and there is a relationship between the airlines but nothing towards a merger. I don’t know what will happen after the next 5-10 years but as we speak today I know by next year there will be no such merger. Because if you look at the two model we are exactly the two similar models and they are too big airlines to put them together so it’s better to leave them.

Of course it’s precisely the similar business models, and proximity of the carriers, that’s why it makes sense to eliminate duplication. Emirates profits are down, and Etihad has been cutting costs and slashing routes after nearly $5 billion in losses over the last 3 years. Many of their changes – to their route network, product, and order book – could be seen as cleaning up the balance sheet before getting acquired.

It makes little sense to have two global aviation hub airports a mere 72 miles from each other. This depresses yields on non-stop flights between the UAE and Europe, and it depresses connecting fares between North American and Europe on the one hand and India and Pakistan on the other. Dubai is the more attractive hub, and Emirates the stronger carrier. Ultimately both carriers could combine at the new Dubai World Central airport which is closer than Dubai International to Abu Dhabi.

Before Etihad launched Gulf Air had an Abu Dhabi hub. Gulf Air had been owned by Qatar, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, and Oman. Qatar pulled out in 2002. Gulf Air dropped its Abu Dhabi hub and Etihad was launched a dozen years ago, Gulf Air CEO James Hogan became Etihad’s CEO.

The Al Nahyan family wanted their emirate to be a world center, but got tired of the massive losses James Hogan’s strategy of buying troubled carriers, redirecting their traffic through Abu Dhabi, and ‘turning them around’ entailed. Giving up an Abu Dhabi global aviation hub is a hard pill to swallow.

No doubt any deal will involve a nod towards continuing to maintain the importance of Abu Dhabi. The new Dubai airport is closer to Abu Dhabi and over time Abu Dhabi certainly becomes a less important hub if this deal happens, no matter what airline leadership says today.

There’s a tremendous history of airlines acquiring competitors just to put them out of business, even if that doesn’t happen here in full. Perhaps my favorite was Southwest’s acquisition of Muse Air. Muse was also known as ‘Revenge Air’. Southwest’s founding President wasn’t Herb Kelleher. It was Lamar Muse, who was President from 1971 – 1978 when he was pushed out. His son started an airline two years later and it competed head to head with Southwest, which acquired the carrier five years later to stop the bleeding on both sides.

Ultimately the question is whether there’s too much pride on the line, and whether Etihad remains enough of a drag on Emirates’ operations that they’ll want to buy. But today’s word certainly bolsters the likelihood of something I’ve been predicting loudly the past two years.