Dubai carrier serves up great tennis and an airline legend
Jen Savedra
| | | Mary Heron and Maurice Flanagan | |
25 AUG 2009: Over the weekend Emirates Airlines hosted members of the industry and media up to the Rexall Centre at York University in Toronto for an afternoon of world class tennis as the top ranked professional women were in town for the Rogers Cup. Emirates were the sponsors of the event and everyone entering the stadium on Friday was immediately given a smart red cap with “Fly Emirates” embroidered on it. If you were spotted by a member of the Emirates Cabin Crew wearing your cap you had a chance to win return business class tickets to Dubai, and three nights accommodation at the Harbour Hotel and Residence. Not surprisingly, in one of the most visually effective promotions I have seen, the stadium was a sea of red heads.
Mary Heron, Emirates manager Canada, who needs no cap to be a redhead, was on hand, and the guest of honour was Maurice Flanagan, the founding CEO of Emirates Airline and now the executive vice-chairman of The Emirates Group.
Flanagan is an industry legend, with a long, distinguished and remarkable career. Prior to his years with Emirates, he spent 25 years with BOAC and British Airways, and then joined Dnata, an organisation established by the government of Dubai to run its travel and airport interests.
In 1985, Flanagan launched Emirates Airline for the Dubai government. With just two leased planes at the beginning, Emirates was nonetheless an immediate success and the airline repaid its $10 million start-up capital the following year.
Flanagan had entertained early dreams of a career as an international soccer player until, during his military service in 1951, he stepped in a hole at an air force base on Prince Edward Island and badly damaged his knee.
In 1969, Flanagan was one of the winners of a TV playwriting competition run by the UK newspaper The Observer and ITV Saturday Night Theatre. Impressed by the submission, renowned critic and writer Kenneth Tynan, one of the competition judges, invited Flanagan to write for The National Theatre. Unfortunately for the theatre, Flanagan chose the less capricious route of a promising airline career. 
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Speaking at Wharton University in the US, Flanagan said that Emirates’ purchase of the super-sized A380 Airbus, (they ordered 55 of the jetliners at a cost of approximately US$250 million each) might look like a gamble, but the jets are also the best strategy for dealing with the shortage of available runway slots, especially in key markets in Europe.
"The risk is not so great. We took [the A380] because it had more seats, and you need more seats because slots are constrained right now. |
"You see that happening at all the airports anybody wants to go to - in London, Bangkok, Paris, Sydney and Melbourne. All these places are at capacity. And an aircraft with 50 seats takes just as much of a runway slot as an aircraft with 600 seats."
Asked if US carriers could duplicate the success of Emirates Airlines, Flanagan conceded that it would be difficult because of the American industry’s existing and entrenched costs, the problem of money-losing US carriers, he said reminded him of a joke about a man who is asked "'how to get from here to there,' and he says, 'Well, I wouldn't start from here.'"
Oh yes, the tennis, that afternoon - Serena won. | An afternoon with Emirates Airlines | | 
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