{"id":1399,"date":"2015-12-05T19:56:21","date_gmt":"2015-12-06T00:56:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/digital.hbs.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/emirates-largest-airline-in-the-middle-east\/"},"modified":"2015-12-09T18:53:51","modified_gmt":"2015-12-09T23:53:51","slug":"emirates-the-largest-airline-in-the-middle-east","status":"publish","type":"hck-submission","link":"https:\/\/d3.harvard.edu\/platform-rctom\/submission\/emirates-the-largest-airline-in-the-middle-east\/","title":{"rendered":"Emirates \u2013 The largest airline in the Middle East"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emirates is an airline based in Dubai and is a subsidiary of The Emirates Group owned by the government of Dubai. Emirates has highly successful integrated business and operating model in the airline industry. It operates over 3300 flights per week or over 20 flights per hour.<\/span><\/p>\n

Business Model<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The core business of Emirates is to transport passengers from one place to another place in highly efficient way while delivering excellent customer services. It serves\u00a0144 cities in 81 countries. Emirates also has cargo business but smaller in revenue. For the year ending March 2015, Emirates carried 50 million passengers (10.7% YoY growth) and 2.4 million tones of cargo (5.6% YoY growth). What Emirates really did across its network on six continents was connecting people to places and businesses with opportunities.<\/span><\/p>\n

Commercial Performance<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

For the year ending March 2015, overall revenue of Emirates was AED86.7 billion (USD23.4 billion) with 7% YoY growth. Approximately 81% revenue is from passenger sales. Emirates has operating profits of AED5.9 billion (USD1.6 billion) with 38% YoY growth. Overall profit margin stood at 5.1%.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Emirates<\/a><\/p>\n

Figure 1: Emirates Revenue (AED billion)<\/p>\n

\"Emirates<\/a><\/p>\n

Figure 2: Emirates Operating Profits (AED billion)<\/p>\n

*1 AED (United Arab Emirates Dirham) = 0.27 USD<\/p>\n

Emirates Operating Model<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

In order to deliver high commercial success, customer satisfaction and to transport huge number of passengers, Emirates invests a ton of money in customer service, buying new aircrafts and upgrading its own airport terminal at Dubai Airport.<\/span><\/p>\n

Emirates fleet<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Emirates fleet consists only of wide-body aircraft and maintains policy of operating young fleet (average use of an aircraft is 6.3 years). As of September 2015, total of 229 aircrafts are in service and 268 aircrafts are in order. Emirates is the largest operator of A380 with 70 A380s in operations and 70 in orders. Emirates also has one of the highest utilization of an aircraft \u2013 13.7 hours per day.<\/span><\/p>\n

What Emirates does the best is to transport huge demand from multiple points to different locations through its hub. For example, assume Emirates has six aircrafts, five of them flying from different points in Asia to Dubai and last one flying from Dubai to London. All five aircrafts from Asia should land at Dubai within acceptable time window (within 3-4 hours) to send those passengers on single flight to London. Scale this model to a network of 144 cities with different time zones and with use of 229 aircrafts. Designing schedule to achieve seamless and hassle free traveling for passengers and at the same time optimizing revenue is very challenging.<\/span><\/p>\n

Designing schedule is only one aspect, one also has to manage the schedule on daily basis given different challenges that take place around the world. Emirates has huge operations control group that successfully manages the fleet of 229 aircrafts around the world (with different time zones); any delays; technical problems; weather challenges etc. This group forms core of operations along with successful ground operations team at the airport. A peek into the\u00a0Emirates control room video:<\/span><\/p>\n

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