Emirates! The Gold-plated airline (AvHistory #15)
Learning the background of the world's gold-standard airline
We will now be going over the most revered and envied airline in the world. Revered for their world-class service, and awed by the number of massive aircraft it possesses. Of course, I refer to Emirates. One of the two flag carriers of the United Arab Emirates (Etihad being the other, based in nearby Abu Dhabi), Emirates can be seen as the United Airlines of the Middle East. By this, I mean that it combines United's fantastic rate of reliability with the Middle East’s own renowned five-star service.
Let’s examine Emirates more closely, shall we?
During the mid 1980s, Gulf Air, the sole large Middle Eastern carrier at the time, began to drastically cut back its services to Dubai. As a result, Emirates was founded on 15 March 1985, with backing from Dubai's royal family and its first two aircraft provided by Pakistan International Airlines. With $10 million in start-up capital, it was required to operate independently of government subsidies, essentially meaning that even though the UAE maintained financial control of the airline, they would maintain a hands-off approach to controlling the airline. Pakistan International Airlines (IATA code: PIA) also provided free training facilities to Emirates cabin crew at Karachi Airport in the early days. The airline was founded by current airline chairman Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum. In the years following its founding, the airline rapidly expanded both its fleet and its destinations.
In October 2008, Emirates moved all of its operations at Dubai International Airport (DXB) to Terminal 3 for consolidation and ease of passenger location in the gigantic airport.
A notable highlight is the fact that Emirates operates a mixed fleet of Airbus and Boeing wide-body aircraft and especially that Emirates is one of the few airlines to operate an all-wide-body aircraft fleet and remains the largest operator of the gigantic Airbus A380 in the world at 116 active aircraft post-pandemic and seven aircraft on standby reserve status. Indeed, the A380 is now ironically synonymous with Emirates, even though a handful of other airlines around the world operate them. Emirates is now also the world’s largest operator of the Boeing 777 wide-body aircraft at 133 777s in active service.
The early years simply included the founding and getting started. Emirates was founded in March 1985 in central Dubai with backing from Dubai's ruler at the time and currently (as well as being the prime minister and vice-president of the United Arab Emirates), Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum after it was seen the Gulf Air was pulling out if not cutting its routes substantially to Dubai. As Dubai was switching its primary revenue to high-net worth international tourism from oil, the royal family wanted to capitalize on this by founding an airline to cater to these tourists. The royal family would perform a one-year economic evaluation of the airline’s results, and analyze the situation. Little would they realize, it turned out better than they could have dreamed.
On the 25th of October 1985, Emirates operated its very first flight from Dubai International Airport to Jinnah International Airport in Karachi, Pakistan, using an old (comparatively new at the time) Airbus A300B4-200, one of Airbus's original models in production. Later, a second flight departed Dubai for Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport in Mumbai, India, using a Boeing 737-300. Both the Airbus A300 and the Boeing 737 were wet-leased from Pakistan International Airways (PIA) but were wildly successful. The success of these inaugural flights encouraged Emirates to, in 1986, Emirates add Ratmalana Airport in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dakka, Bangladesh, Queen Alia International Airport south of Amman in Jordan, and Cairo International Airport in Cairo, Egypt to its route network. On the 3rd of July 1987, an Airbus A310 flew from Toulouse–Blagnac Airport to Dubai as Emirates took delivery of its first owned aircraft, an Airbus A310-300. Flights to Frankfurt Airport in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany (at the time, West Germany) commenced via Atatürk Airport (the now-private airport in Istanbul, Turkey), London-Gatwick (London’s secondary airport to Heathrow) and Male International Airport (pronounced Mah-lay, the capital of the Maldives, known as the tourist haven for the wealthy). This was soon followed by Changi Airport in Singapore, Bangkok International Airport in Thailand, and Hong Kong International Airport.
During its early years, Emirates experienced initially unprecedented strong growth, averaging 30% annually, as illustrated. The 1991 Gulf War helped boost business for the airline as it was the only airline to continue flying in the last ten days of the war. In June 1991 shortly after the end of the hostilities caused by the Gulf War, Emirates finally managed to acquire slots at London-Heathrow. In 1996, Emirates took delivery of its baseline Boeing 777-200, followed by the extended-range version in 1997 and in 1999 the Airbus A330-200 and the baseline Boeing 777-300.
In 2000, the airline placed an order for a large number of aircraft, including the Boeing 777-300ER (now used by many airlines as their flagship planes to market their brands) and the massive Airbus A380 (still in production at the time), and also launched Skywards, its frequent flyer program.
Since then, the airline has continued to expand its fleet and network at a breakneck pace, with a focus on operating flights to anywhere in the world via Dubai and competing with other major airlines on international routes. They expanded the use of Dubai as a transfer or through-way hub, as evidenced by passenger rates; upwards of 78% of passengers have ongoing flights from Dubai after landing there in the first place. Its growth has attracted criticism from other carriers, who claim that the airline has unfair advantages and have called for an end to open-skies policies with the UAE as a result. In 2017, Emirates "renewed its aircraft buying spree" and agreed to buy a number of Boeing’s long-haul wide-body 787 Dreamliners for $15.1 billion. The Wall Street Journal described this deal as a "painful loss" for Airbus and their A350 program (though they have since). In 2023, Emirates ordered $50 billion of Boeing jets with their sister airline, the low-cost focused yet geographic sister carrier, flyDubai, at the Dubai Airshow (a weekend-long trade expo marketed as an airshow, one of the Big Three airshows along with Paris and London).
In April 2024, Emirates announced its plan to relocate its hub to Al Maktoum Airport (DWC, not only the airport’s IATA code, but the abbreviation for the owner/operators, Dubai World Airport Corporation) when the new airport is fully completed; as of 2026, DWC is a comparative ghost-town though it is steadily getting an increasing yet slow trickle of aviation traffic. It is a fascinating airport, and I will do an article on it soon, as it is destined to be the world’s largest and most technologically advanced airport. In 2026, Emirates temporarily suspended operations due to the US-Iran War.
Emirates’ corporate structure is unique. The airline is a subsidiary of The Emirates Group, which is a subsidiary of the Dubai government's investment company, the Investment Corporation of Dubai. The airline has recorded a profit every year, except its second year, and the growth has never fallen below 20% a year. In its first 11 years, it doubled in size every 3.5 years and has every four years since. The Dubai government is the sole owner of the company, but it does not invest any new capital into Emirates or interfere with the airline's operations, maintaining the royal family’s hands-off methodology they and their government created on day one in the mid-1980s when they created the airline.
In employee operations, The Emirates Group employed a total of 105,730 employees across its airline itself and aviation subsidiaries. Emirates has seven subsidiaries and its parent company has more than 50 related subsidiaries, constituting the definition of a massive corporation. At the end of the fiscal year in 2025, the company employed a rough total of 59,760 staff, of which approximately 21,490 were cabin crew, 4,213 were flight deck crew, 3,316 were in engineering,12,627 were listed as other, 5,376 employees were at overseas stations, and 12,098 were at subsidiary supplemental companies at Dubai and elsewhere. Emirates provides its employees with benefits such as comprehensive health plans and paid maternity and sick leave. Another strategy employed by Emirates is to use profit sharing and merit pay as part of its competency-based approach to performance management, this primarily helps greatly with employee retention. For example, in FY 2023 and FY 2024, the group awarded its employees hefty bonuses as their share of the company's profits earned in those years. In 2023, employees got 24 weeks of pay as their bonus, and in 2024, they received 20 weeks of pay. Last year, in 2025, Emirates Group awarded its employees a 22-week bonus following a record-breaking profit of AED 22.7 billion—an 18% increase over the prior year. The US could learn a few things from Emirates’ business strategy. From the opposition standpoint, established network carriers in Europe and Australia, such as Air France-KLM, British Airways, Lufthansa, and Qantas, see Emirates' strategic decision to reposition itself as a global carrier as a major threat because it enables travelers to bypass traditional airline hubs such as London-Heathrow, Paris-CDG, and Frankfurt on their way between Europe/North America and Asia/Australia by changing flights in Dubai instead. These carriers also find it difficult to deal with the growing competitive threat Emirates poses to their business because of their much higher cost base. Some of these carriers, notably Air France and Qantas, have accused Emirates of receiving hidden state subsidies and maintaining too close of a relationship with Dubai's airport authority and its aviation authority, both of which are also wholly state-owned entities that share the same government owner with the airline. Qantas' chairman claimed that Emirates can reduce its borrowing costs below market rates by taking advantage of its government shareholders' sovereign borrower status. Emirates' president disagrees and has also referred to United States airlines bankruptcy protection as being a tangible form of state assistance. The airline makes regular profits. In 2016, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines (the US’ Big Three) made claims, stating that Emirates violated the Open Skies Agreement, but these conflicts were resolved by Summer 2018.
In terms of marketing, Emirates went through several short revisions. In the 1990s, Emirates launched its first set of commercials all with the slogan "So be good to yourself, Fly Emirates".
In 1999, Emirates launched a rare A330-200 commercial with different pictures showing the aircraft painted in the original livery, and the livery used from 1999 until 2023, which was launched a few months prior in late 1998.
Commercials reappeared beginning in 2002 and the airline adopted the slogan "Fly Emirates. Keep Discovering" in 2004. In the 2010s, Emirates utilized multiple slogans in its advertising including the 2004 slogan, "Fly Emirates. Keep Discovering", then "Fly Emirates To over Six Continents", and finally "Hello Tomorrow". In 2024-2026, Emirates uses the simple slogan "Fly Better."
Emirates introduced a new uniform design in August 2008 for its 16,000 airline staff. The offboard uniform includes the red Emirates hat, red kick-pleats in the skirts, more fitted blouses, and the return of red leather shoes and desert-tone brushed brown handbags. For the onboard uniform, male and female cabin crew wear service waistcoats in place of the previously worn service jackets and tabards. Since its formation in 1985, Emirates aircraft have carried a section of the United Arab Emirates flag on the tail fins, a calligraphy version of the logo in only Arabic on the engines, and the "Emirates" logo on the fuselage both in Arabic and English. The color scheme used since 1985 was changed in November 1999, with the first Boeing 777-300. This change included the modification of the logotype, the enlargement and movement of the English logo (the Arabic remaining smaller, the English “Emirates” moving to the side of the aircraft in large lettering) towards the front of the aircraft, and a different, flowing Emirati red-green-black flag on the tailfin, an aspect that has never changed and in 2025, grew brighter and more significant from a visual and aesthetic aspect.
Emirates sponsors Cricket Australia, and the Pro Arch Tournament. Its branding also features on international cricket umpires' shirts. Emirates was also an official partner of the International Cricket Council. The deal gives Emirates association with all major ICC tournaments, and at least five (so far) ICC Cricket World Cups, the Women's Cricket World Cups, ICC Champions Trophy, and the ICC World Twenty20. This is in addition to sponsorship to professional 12 European and Middle Eastern football (simply known in the US as soccer) clubs. Emirates was a sponsor of FIFA and the FIFA World Cup, but stopped its sponsorship in early 2015 because of allegations of corruption and bribery within FIFA, as well as FIFA's controversial decision to award the 2022 FIFA World Cup to Qatar. Emirates also sponsors horse-racing, Formula 1 (F1) racing, Tennis (including the US Open and Wimbledon), the Los Angeles Dodgers of the MLB, cycling including the World Tour of Cycling (which includes the tour de France), and Sailing teams especially Team Emirates.
Emirates has growth-oriented partnerships with other airlines, but is not a member of any of the three global airline alliances – Oneworld, SkyTeam, or Star Alliance. In 2000, the airline briefly considered joining Star Alliance, but opted to remain independent. The reasoning for this was later revealed by the senior vice-president of the airline's commercial operations worldwide: "Your ability to react in the marketplace is hindered because you need a consensus from your alliance partners." Though as of 2026, they are re-considering joining Star Alliance for guaranteed network growth and stability.
Analyzing Emirates cabin offerings is where things get truly intriguing.
First Class
Offering a genuine First Class, unlike many airlines which have opted for an enhanced Business Class. The two types of First Class seating are (1) the fully enclosed suite with a floor-to-ceiling door and (2) a private suite with doors that close but do not extend to the ceiling. Both suites come complete with closing doors to ensure privacy, a minibar, a coat rack, and storage. They also feature the ICE (their official name and abbreviation for Information, Communication, Entertainment) in-flight entertainment system on a 23-inch-wide (58 cm) LCD screen in the private suites and a 32-inch-wide (81 cm) on the fully enclosed suite. The seat converts into a 2-meter-long fully flat bed. Private suites are available on three-class and four-class Airbus A380-800 and three-class Boeing 777-300ER aircraft. The fully enclosed suites are available only on newly delivered Boeing 777-300ER aircraft, and named the “Game-Changer” suite.
On its newly delivered Airbus A380-800, First Class features actual private suites, two shower-equipped lavatories and a true spa, plus access to the first/business class bar area and lounge. This and other premium class (business and First Class) seating is located on the entire upper deck of the aircraft.
Emirates introduced a new First Class cabin for its Boeing 777-300ER fleet in November of 2017 and first flights to Brussels and Geneva were a bit later on 1st of December in 2017. The new first-class cabin is configured with six suites on a 1-1-1 layout.
Both of the middle suites are equipped with three virtual windows, which are high-definition LCD screens that relay real-time images using HD cameras on either side of the aircraft. Amenities include two minibars placed on either side of the entertainment screen, a 13-inch tablet with a front camera to communicate with the cabin crew and to order room service, and a panel to control the lighting and temperature inside the suite. Emirates has also introduced a new seat in late 2024 in collaboration with German-brand Mercedes-Benz, which features a new zero-gravity position. The suites resemble "a private bedroom on a luxury yacht" as numerous other reviewers have stated. Emirates is constantly innovating for the sake of pure luxury. It goes without saying, but as a First Class passenger, you also gain access to the massive concourse-long Emirates lounge in Dubai.
Business Class
Business Class on Boeing 777-200LRs and Boeing 777-300ERs feature seats with a 1.5-metre-long (60 in) pitch that reclines to 2-meter-long (79 in), angled lie-flat beds. Amenities include a massage function, privacy partition, winged headrest with six-way movement, two individual reading lights, and an overhead light per seat; in-seat power supply, USB ports, and an RCA socket for laptop connection; and over 600 channels of entertainment on the ICE system, shown on a 23 in-wide (58 cm) HD TV screen.
On Airbus A380-800 aircraft, the seats recline to form a fully flat bed and are equipped with personal minibars. The unique staggered layout makes half of the business-class seats on Emirates A380 23 cm (9 in) shorter than the others, at only 1.8 m (70 in) long. Business class passengers also have access to an on-board bar at the rear of the aircraft. Note: the aircraft must be at cruise altitude before alcohol can be served (at least 20,000 feet).
Premium Economy Class
In December of 2020, it was announced that Emirates' new Premium economy cabin would be equipped with Recaro PL3530 seats which were designed exclusively for the airline.
The seats offer a pitch of up to 40 inches (100 cm), a recline of 8 inches (20 cm) and measure 19.5 inches (50 cm) wide. All seats are equipped with a 13.3-inch (34 cm) entertainment screen using the Emirates ICE system.
Currently, 22 Airbus A380 aircraft in the Emirates fleet have the new premium economy class cabin. These seats are also set to be retrofitted on the airline's older Boeing 777-300ERs and Airbus A380s as part of a retrofit program of US$2 billion that began at the end of 2022; at the end of the program, 67 Airbus A380s and 53 Boeing 777s were fitted with premium economy.
I can tell you from experience, Emirates A380 premium economy is one of the most comfortable seats in the sky.
Economy Class
Main Cabin or Economy Class on Emirates offers a 79–81-centimetre-long (31–32 in) seat pitch on Airbus aircraft and 86 cm (34 in) on Boeing aircraft, with standard seat width (except on the Boeing 777 fleet). Emirates has 10 seats per row in a 3-4-3 layout on its Boeing 777 fleet. The seat features adjustable headrests, a 3000-channel ICE system, and in-seat laptop power outlets on newer aircraft and laptop recharging facilities in galleys in older aircraft. Additional recline is available on A380 economy-class seats.
Emirates offers no basic economy class seating in its aircraft.
Catering on Emirates flights from Dubai International Airport is provided by Emirates Flight Catering, which operates one of the largest airline catering facilities in the world. Emirates also offers special meal options, in all classes, based on age, dietary restrictions, preference, and religious observance such as lactose-intolerant, Kosher or Halal meals. Special meals must be ordered in advance at least 24 hours before the flight departure time. All meals are prepared according to Halal dietary guidelines. Relatedly, in June of 2018, Emirates signed a $40 million joint venture with Oakland, California-based Crop One Holdings (COH), to build and maintain the world's largest hydroponic growing facility. It would provide daily yields of roughly 3 tons of leafy greens per day to all flights, with a near 150,000-square-foot (14,000 m2) indoor, vertical farm. It remains under construction in 2026.
Thank you for learning about the most gold-plated airline in the world with me! That isn't a hyperbolic euphemism by the way, Emirates covers all Business and First-Class cabins in faux-teak and faux-gold paneling. You can learn tons more history, information, and gain much more knowledge at our site, brookeintheairtravel.net!
