Emirates airline president Tim Clark has said he expects a circumspect response from the US government regarding the complaint filed by three international US airlines against the carrier and those of its Gulf-based competitors Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways.

In an interview with the BBC, Clark said he thinks the Washington will step in and “inject a degree of sanity” into the row.

Clark said the complaints are unfounded and likely motivated by US-based competitors’ lack of belief that their success has been achieved and sustained using fair business practices and without “cheating”

He alluded that people would otherwise believe a different story for an airline that has operated so successfully for 30 years, consistently expanding its fleet and services, and deploying them across countries all over the world while turning in profits.

Emirates posted an annual profit in the fiscal year ending in March 2015 of $1.5bn, a 34 per cent rise over the previous year and the second highest in its history.  

Delta Airlines, American Airlines and United Airlines filed a complaint against the three state-owned Gulf carriers earlier this year, accusing them of receiving subsidies of up to $42bn from their governments, in violation of the bilateral open skies agreement. The US carriers want their government to investigate these so-called unfair subsidies to establish a ground to restrict the Gulf airlines’ landing rights expansion into the US.