"On Sunday November 1st 2009 we have planned for an Airbus A380 Super Jumbo to depart from Toronto to Dubai at 2240hrs local time "

Tim Clark,
Chief Director (Airline)

This was going to be a year of consolidation with one new route -Dubai-Hyderabad planned - but it turned out to be the toughest year in the history of the airline. Initially sales were affected by a recession and later tragically influenced by the bombing of Colombo Airport and later the horrendous attacks in New York.

Not only did this cause thousands of travellers to cancel or defer their travel but we were faced with finding funds for a multi-billion dollar insurance cover as rates were rocketed by the world’s insurance companies.

In what was supposed to be a year of gradually strengthening the network with one new route plus extra services to Hong Kong, Tehran and Johannesburg, Emirates suddenly found itself in the centre of a dilemma...to tread water and try to keep our heads above the surface or carry on and maintain our efforts to reach the forecasted revenue. We decided to take the bold approach and our people at the sharp end, the worldwide sales team, were encouraged to maintain an even higher profile, motivated by this “business as usual” strategy. They showed their brilliant best in securing extra business, particularly from those competitors who had cancelled or suspended flights to Dubai. At the same time, Commercial brought some 460 front line travel agents to Dubai in November 2001, followed by 1,400 agents from Europe, the sub-continent, Asia and Australia during January 2002. We focussed our efforts on reassuring our customers that Dubai International Airport has always maintained the highest possible security standards for passengers and cargo and that Dubai continued to be a safe and exciting destination for their clients.

We amended our 10-year plan to reflect the additional orders (detailed by the Chairman and Group Managing Director) for new aircraft and new destinations. This is an hour-by-hour detailed design for the airline up to the year 2010. For example on Sunday, November 1st 2009 we have planned for an Airbus A380 Super Jumbo to depart Toronto for Dubai at 2240 hours local time; and on Monday 2nd April 2007, our daily A330, EK133 will depart Moscow at 1845 hours for the nonstop flight to Dubai.

As we did not want to enter into a deep discounting campaign, we developed a number of value-added packages to encourage passengers to visit or stopover in Dubai, including “Dubai Winter Breaks” aimed at GCC visitors and “Le Meridien For Free”, plus “Jumeirah International First & Business Class Offer” to attract premium class passengers.
Our internet booking site was also used to offer new products to consumers and we saw a satisfactory increase in direct sales while online offers including bonus miles schemes were introduced for members of Skywards Frequent Flyer Programme.

In Europe our Call Centre at Wilmslow , Cheshire, started to handle calls from France, Germany and Italy. In the CIS we appointed new Passenger Sales Agents in Almaty, Kazakstan and Moscow, Russia. In Saudia Arabia we introduced a third service to Dammam and to Sanaa in Yemen, we upgraded the Airbus A310 to a larger Airbus A330.
Our web-based marketing, planning and reporting system, FOCUS, continued to be developed and enhanced with a new sales force automation system planned for introduction in late 2003.