Dubai – Mubasher: Emirates Group expects to report high profits next week, which will reverse the decline in the carrier’s profit in 2017, a decline that originated from a number of factors including the growth of the US Dollar and the global economic instability.
Profits stood at AED 2.5 billion for the fiscal year ended March 2018, while revenues reached AED 94.7 billion, which is better as compared with the prior fiscal year, chairman of the Dubai-based airline Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum said.
The shortage of pilots, revealed earlier by the company’s president Tim Clark, is not so big a problem as some websites reported, the carrier’s chief commercial officer (CCO) Thierry Antinori told Arabian Business.
“The shortage of 100 to 150 pilots has made us do what we would not have normally done such as cut back on flights to Florida. But the impact is quite limited,” Arabian Business reported, citing the top official as saying.
These measures were aimed at offsetting the drop in demand usually occur during May and Islam's holy month of Ramadan, which are – unfortunately— coming together this year, Antinori said.
The shortage of pilots has been already addressed, as Emirates opened its flight academy in November, Antinori stated.
“We are now training 170 pilots there, in addition to hiring pilots, so this shortage should not last more than a couple months,” the Dubai-based carrier’s CCO remarked, according to Arabian Business.
We can trace back this shortage to two main reasons: the global deficit and the very attractive job offers that the Chinese present, Antinori said.
Thus, Emirates is responsible to provide pilots with better offers to attract them back to Dubai, he added.
