Global reach

Just as Dubai is the product of big thinking, so too is its airline, Emirates.

The growth and growth of Emirates is a stunning story, from a fleet of one A300 and one 737 in 1985 to today where it is the world’s biggest international airline with almost 200 widebody airliners. Locally, Emirates operates almost 80,000 seats a week to Australia and New Zealand, according to CAPA, and in passenger numbers it is now the second largest international airline serving Australia, behind Qantas and now ahead of Singapore Airlines.

This is the airline that Qantas is now plugging into, thanks to its new “seismic” partnership arrangement.

“A lot of people were travelling on Emirates, which meant that their brand presence was well known and they had a good brand in Australia,” Qantas International CEO Simon Hickey tells Australian Aviation in our feature elsewhere this issue. “And that level of capacity actually now serves us really well, as we’ve never had so much capacity now that we can sell, and so much choice for people to sell when they are connecting to Europe. Not in the history of Qantas have we ever looked like this. ” Undoubtedly, there are a lot of benefits to Qantas, and its passengers, from this deal. Qantas should benefit from a better bottom line, its customers from a better product proposition thanks to one-stop access to much of Europe and North Africa, and with Emirates as a partner and not a competitor, the Qantas Frequent Flyer scheme benefits significantly. But what’s in it for Emirates? No doubt Qantas buying codeshared tickets on Emirates flights between Dubai and Europe will be a nice little earner (at the expense of erstwhile Qantas partners British Airways, Air France and Cathay Pacific), and Emirates gains access to Qantas’s domestic market (but given EK already flies to Australia’s five biggest cities, that is only of limited value).

If Emirates is the result of visionary leadership, where does Qantas fit into that vision? Time will tell, but an announcement from Emirates a few days after the Qantas joint venture kicked off perhaps gives a clue, with Emirates announcing the launch of its first trans-Atlantic services, from Milan to New York from October. That Emirates can contemplate a service between two cities outside of its home market speaks volumes of the strength of the Emirates brand today, a brand that looks increasingly like transcending the national borders that airline brands normally have to sit in, thanks in no small part to what must be the airline world’s most extensive sponsorship program, from sporting teams to symphony orchestras, the world over.

So as much as the Qantas deal should prove a “nice little earner” for Emirates, the linkage also helps further extend its brand and reach, and making Emirates trans-Pacific flights between Australia and the US, giving EK a round-the-world offering, a plausible proposition.

The Emirates brand clearly has global reach, and its clear Emirates Airline has global ambitions, beyond its hugely impressive but hugely congested Dubai hub.

Is Emirates on the way to being the world’s first global airline brand? I suspect it won’t take two decades to find out! Australian Aviation travelled to Dubai as a guest of Qantas.

If Emirates is the result of visionary leadership, where does Qantas fit into that vision?