Profits set to take-off again at Emirates Airline
Posted on 27 April 2008 with no comments from readers
On Wednesday this week the world’s fastest growing airline is set to report its annual profits in Dubai. Emirates Airline is expected to post another record year with profits up at least a third to more than $1.3 billion.
Having quietly tripled its Dubai to New York service to three flights a day, Emirates is close to capacity on the transatlantic route to the Big Apple. Officials say that the answer is it new 457-seat A380 superjumbo from Airbus which will operate on the winter schedule from October 1.
Transatlantic first
The first Emirates A380 is scheduled for delivery this August and is most likely to end up on the transatlantic or London route, Emirates veteran Vice Chairman Maurice Flanaghan told a recent television interview.
Emirates keenly awaits delivery of the first of its fleet of 58 giant A380s, the largest A380 order placed by any airline, and intended to achieve a step-change in operational efficiency and yet higher profits.
The 100 per cent Dubai Government owned carrier has a fleet of 115 airplanes which will rise to 200 by 2012 with 22 planes delivered this year alone. Last week Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, President of Dubai Civil Aviation Authority and Chairman and Chief Executive of Emirates Group said the airline will have more than 450 aircraft in its fleet by 2020.
Growth prospects
‘Emirates has been doubling its size every three or four years since it started. I think we will continue with that kind of growth,’ he told a session at the World Travel and Tourism Council Summit. Emirates Airline has 243 planes on order worth around $60 billion.
Dubai is following a vertically integrated tourism development strategy, alongside breakneck economic expansion, and is planning to receive 15 million visitors a year by 2015, up from seven million last year. And to achieve that target Emirates is going to need all those aircraft.
