Emirates ceases operations

Emirates has announced that it will suspend all commercial flights from March 25 for an indefinite period. Cargo flights will continue. (See the bottom of the article for successive updates)

This decision is accompanied by drastic salary cuts of 100% for presidents, 50% for pilots and certain categories of managers and executives, and 25% for the most senior cabin crew. Except the lowest levels of the airline will not be affected.

We had leaks from some insiders during the day on Sunday but there was no need to try to cross-check since the airline quickly announced it on its twitter account before deleting its tweet in the process.

It just seems that the Emirati airline preferred to wait to better take care of its communication, especially because the tweet was sent before the email received by all the employees afterwards. The information was however confirmed by our “insiders” and a “modified” announcement was finally published by the airline.

[Mise à jour 23/3] Shortly after the announcement, Emirates backtracked and maintained its flights to Great Britain, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Australia, South Africa, the United States and Canada

[Mise à jour 24/3] A new twist and a change of speech. Following the Emirates flight ban, Emirates and Etihad have cancelled all their flights without exception for an indefinite period.

Anyway (see below) when we see the Emirates program as it was announced on 21/3, a total suspension until June 30 does not seem a heresy.

Is this a surprise? Yes and no. Dubai and its airline were doing “less badly” than the European airlines for example. But in our opinion its main strengths suddenly turned out to be its weakness.

– Its hub. Emirates has almost exclusively a connecting customer base, with very few people having Dubai as their point of departure. To travel you need a starting point and an ending point. As the borders closed, Emirates was subjected to a kind of double penalty, because while flying from Dubai to airport X was possible, flying from airport Y to Dubai was often not. And conversely. More difficult than when you have a high proportion of “local” customers.

– The A380. The Emirates model (long-haul to long-haul connections in large volumes) was almost the only one that would make the A380 profitable, provided that the flights were full. With the decline in traffic, the A380 is becoming as useless and expensive to operate for Emirates as it is for the airlines that have already decided to sell it or ground it. This is the paradox (or not…) of this crisis, the “global” airlines will suffer more than the others.

Let’s not forget that Dubai will host the World Expo from October 2020.

For your information, the Emirates flight restrictions as of March 21.

Photo : A380 Emirates Airlines by ZGPhotography via Shutterstock

Bertrand Duperrin
Bertrand Duperrinhttp://www.duperrin.com
Compulsive traveler, present in the French #avgeek community since the late 2000s and passionate about (long) travel since his youth, Bertrand Duperrin co-founded Travel Guys with Olivier Delestre in March 2015.
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