Dubai's Emirates airline expects to exceed last year's record profits of 476 million dollars in the financial year ending March 31, its executive president said Saturday. "Despite the fuel issue, despite more recently the tsunami effect, Emirates is going to do better this year than it did last year," Tim Clark told reporters.
"We will be in better shape despite that the (price of) fuel doubled ... Because we are a dollars-based company, the strengthening of the euro and the British pound allowed us to make an exchange gain," he said.
Emirates had also slowed down expansion plans in the United States and frozen recruitment to counter rising fuel costs, Clark said.
The airline posted record profits of 476 million dollars for the financial year ending last March and reported that net profits jumped more than 40 percent in the first six months of the financial year ending March 2005, reaching 236 million dollars.
Serving 77 cities in 54 countries, Emirates has on order 45 Airbus A380-800s, 30 Boeing 777-300ERs, three Airbus A340-500s and 20 Airbus A340-600 Higher Gross Weight aircraft, totalling 28 billion dollars.
Clark said the airline was looking at Boeing's and Airbus' future commercial aircraft but reckoned they did not correspond to its needs. "We are looking at the 7E7, now named the 787, we are also looking at the Airbus A350. Both these aircraft, we feel, are a little bit too small for us," he said.
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