DUBAI: Emirates operated over 192,000 flights, with its fleet of274 aircraft travelling 908 million km around the globe and carried over 59 million passengers, a media report said.
“We had our challenges in 2018, however we continued to maximise opportunities by deploying our capacity to best serve customer demand, keeping a close watch on our costs, utilising technology to improve business performance, as well as developing more customer-centric products and services to provide our passengers with greater choice,” Sir Tim Clark, President of Emirates Airline was quoted as saying.
“Our customers remain at the heart of everything we do, and our continual investments in the business will be the foundation on which we will build our future growth and continue to deliver solid results,” he added.
In January last, the airline announced a $16 billion deal for 36 additional Airbus A380 aircraft, to be delivered to Emirates from 2020 onwards. Emirates also expanded the number of cities served by its popular A380 aircraft to 50 destinations with recent launch of scheduled services to Hamburg and Osaka. The airline also led one-off A380 services to five cities: Beirut, Muscat, Islamabad, Riyadh and Accra, and temporary services to St. Petersburg.
Emirates also extended its partnership with flydubai to expand access to its customers to a combined network of 206 unique points, and over one million passengers have booked their travel on combined Emirates and flydubai itineraries as a result.
During the year Emirates also announced a new codeshare agreement with Jetstar Pacific and enhanced its commercial strategic partnership with South African Airways. Emirates hit two fleet milestones in 2018, celebrating 10 years of A380 operations in August, and taking delivery of its last Boeing 777-300ER, its 146th in December.
