Delayed planes cost $10bn in missed revenue, Emirates says

• Almost 400 delayed planes
• President Tim Clark says billions lost
• Premium flights oversubsrcibed

Dubai’s flag carrier Emirates has missed out on more than $10 billion in lost freight and passenger revenues as a result of aircraft delivery delays and capacity constraints, according to the company’s president.

The airline has foregone as much as AED30 billion ($8 billion) a year in lost passenger revenue and up to AED8 billion ($2 billion) on freight, Sir Tim Clark told AGBI on the sidelines of the World Governments Summit in Dubai.

The state-backed operator has an order backlog of 315 planes from US manufacturer Boeing and 57 from European company Airbus. The latter is scheduled to deliver up to 18 of its A350 aircraft by the end of the year.

Clark said the airline would have taken delivery of around 120 Boeing 777-9s had the programme remained on schedule and not been delayed by a series of manufacturing problems.

Instead, Emirates has been forced to extend the life of its existing 777 fleet while pouring billions of dirhams into cabin upgrades and refurbishments to protect yields.

Despite those investments, Clark said Emirates is missing out on additional revenues. Premium cabins on long-haul routes such as Sydney, London Heathrow and New York are frequently sold out, sometimes with multiple passengers competing for a single seat.

He said that for every premium seat sold to Sydney there is another on a waiting list, while Heathrow last year had a waiting list that was five-deep in August.

“We know that today we are leaving business on the table,” Clark said.

Load factors across the network are running at 80 to 81 percent on average, but Clark said many routes are operating well into the nineties at peak periods. Once seat factors exceed about 70 percent to 75 percent, he said, spill or lost demand becomes inevitable. 

Clark has said previously that the company is seeking compensation from Boeing for delays in the delivery of the 777X wide-body aircraft.

Emirates is outgrowing its base at Dubai International Airport and has plans to move to Dubai World Central in the south of the city by 2032. The $35 billion development will be double the size of the existing site.

“If we had expanded on an unconstrained basis with the fleet that we want and airfield able to take it, which is why we put DWC on the map, we’re probably, in terms of income, about 20-30 percent down on where we could be today because of the aircraft,” he said.

On Thursday Emirates announced the expansion of its operations to Tokyo Narita with the introduction of a second daily service from May 1, operated by the airline’s retrofitted Boeing 777-300ER.

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But Clark admitted his frustrations at not being able to add to the network further.

“We’ve got a number of other routes there where we desperately want to go,” he said.

This includes the protracted discussions around direct flights from Dubai to Berlin.

“I think the first attempt to get to Berlin was intimating to the German government in 1991. And we have been on the case ever since. It’s up to them to say whether we can go there or not,” said Clark.

Reports suggest the airline is targeting a potential launch of a new route to Berlin Brandenburg Airport from Dubai in December 2026, pending regulatory approval.