Fly Emirates, Fly Better
Emirates
Tagline
Net Worth
$288,000,000
Started in (City)
Dubai
Started in (Country)
United Arab Emirates
Incorporation Date
25th December, 1985
Bankruptcy Date
-
Founders
- Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum
About
Emirates is one of the largest international airlines in the world. This award-winning airline is known for its excellent in-flight entertainment experience and beautiful and diverse flight attendants that are ever so helpful. It operates mainly out of the Dubai International Airport, the third busiest in the world and definitely the busiest in the middle east. It has the largest fleet of wide-body aircraft in the world. In fact, it only flies wide-body aircrafts these days. It is also the only major international airline that is not a part of the three global airline alliances and is owned by the government of Dubai.
Beginning
The story of Emirates begins with the tantrums thrown by one of the earlier airlines in the Middle East Gulf Air, established by the rulers of the UAE in 1974. When His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, opened the Dubai International Airport, he introduced an innovative open-skies policy. Since its creation, Gulf Air had always wanted this policy to be abandoned as it felt the policy just made them a feeder for other long-haul carriers, and the government kept refusing its demands. In retaliation, Gulf Air, without giving any prior notice to the government, reduced two-thirds of its frequencies and capacities to and from Dubai, between 1984 and 1985. This created an unfilled vacuum of essential flight services for the country and the region that foreign carriers could not or would not fill and occupy. Thus, in order to address the problem and formulate a solution, His Highness met with Maurice Flanagan, director, and manager of DNATA (Dubai National Air Transport Association). This meeting became a 10-man team that also included the future president of the Emirates, Sir Timothy Charles Clark, and the ruler\’s then 26-year old son, Sheik Ahmed bin Saeed Al-Maktoum. A proposal was brought up and that was for Dubai to have its own airline that would serve its interests. His Highness quickly accepted the group\’s proposal given that his two conditions were met. Those were:
1) The new airline should meet the highest quality standards, and
2) There would be no additional capital injections from the government other than the agreed $ 10 million start-up capital.
Road to Success
In between the names “Dubai Airlines” or “Emirates Airlines”, His Highness opted for Emirates and the decision was made to build the airline on top of DNATA, which was already the sales agent for 25 airlines at that time. The comprehensive business plan for Emirates was ready by December 1984. After that, in March 1985, Maurice Flanagan, the new managing director of the new airline, embarked on an ambitious mission to launch an airline with $10 million in five months. He was told that the airline had to “look good, be good, and make money”. Soon enough, the airline got to wet-lease a Boeing 737-300 and an Airbus A300-200 from Pakistan International Airways. Then came the necessity to establish flight destinations for which, deals were struck with Karachi, Bombay, and New Delhi. The first-ever flight was on October 25th, 1985 when flight EK600 departed Dubai International Airport for Karachi. Subsequent flights to Bombay and New Delhi soon followed. Right from the beginning, Emirates provided luxury to its passengers along with the very important spacious leg rooms.
Emirates transported both freight and passengers from its first flight and by its first year, it had transported 260,000 passengers and 10,000 tons of freight. Within nine months, it was already making a profit. This allowed Emirates to add Colombo, Dhaka, Amman, and Cairo to its route network by 1986. In fact, it began to dominate the region so much that the previously rogue Gulf Air, partly owned by the wealthier neighboring emirate of Abu Dhabi, suffered a 56% loss in profits within Emirates’ first year of flights. By 1987, Emirates expanded its fleet with a second 727-200, and its first fully-owned aircraft, an Airbus A310-304 delivered from Toulouse in France. Emirates then flew into Europe for the first time when it began servicing flights to London Gatwick.
Challenges
The intensifying Gulf Wars kept all the other airlines out of the area except for Emirates, which continued flying and earning. In the fall of 1993, it struck a deal with US Airlines that enabled Emirates to now offer worldwide service. Emirates was progressing fast and it added telecommunications in its airbus in all three classes in 1993. Emirates decided to take this upgrade even further and added an inflight fax facility in 1994. Emirates was already connecting 32 destinations with its 15 aircraft. It had become the sixth-largest of eight Middle East carriers and its focus on customer satisfaction and smooth cargo service earned it numerous awards despite its small size back then. Flight attendants started celebrating special occasions with in-flight cakes and Polaroid cameras, especially for business class, first-class passengers, royalties, dignitaries, and celebrities: a practice that the service industry calls “delight”.
Failures
The job of a flight attendant at Emirates is highly sought after by those who want to travel and earn money simultaneously. Although its rules and regulations on its cabin crew are pretty lax and liberal, especially compared to other major middle-eastern airlines like Qatar Airways, the airline\’s employment policies came into question when a female flight attendant apparently jumped from an open door of a Boeing 777 jet when it parked at Entebbe International Airport in Uganda on 14th March 2018. This was reportedly due to weight and age issues. However, this is not the first Emirates death of its kind. In 2013, 28-year old Evelyn Clarke apparently jumped from the sixth floor of a Dubai tower block. A British male cabin crew named Michael Moran also died under mysterious circumstances during a layover in Amsterdam. In July 2020, the airline also had to lay off 9000 employees worldwide, which would and will make a total of about 30,000 employees laid off in 2020. The 800 pilots laid off that month joined that number. Most of the employees laid off are those in training or probation. Even long experiences of more than 12 years in the company did not provide immunity either.
Achievements
- Airline of the Year 2020
Subsidies
- dnata
- Emirates Airline
CEOs
- Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum