Skift Take
"The notion that we should allow others to chart our destiny is anathema to the thinking certainly of me and others." That's the hard/soft power Emirates is projecting around the globe.
Emirates, the world’s biggest airline by international traffic, said it’s studying “ways and means” to accommodate an order for 30 more Airbus SAS A380 superjumbos.
Curfews at destination airports and a lack of space at the carrier’s Dubai base are the main constraints on lifting an existing order for 90 of the world’s biggest passenger planes to 120, President Tim Clark said today in an interview.
Emirates, the biggest A380 customer, has exploited the Gulf’s position at the heart of inter-continental flight paths to build a hub served by waves of departures, stripping traffic away from older network carriers in Europe and Asia. Clark said he’s mulling superjumbo flights to locations including Houston, Los Angeles and San Francisco as in-service enhancements to a model introduced in 2007 bring the cities within range.
“We know what we want to do, we know where we could put more than 90 A380s today,” the executive said by telephone from Dubai. “It’s a question of can we actually fit them in? The economics of Houston are very powerful. That would be an
