EMIRATES GROUP REPORTS FIRST LOSS IN 30 YEARS

The Emirates Group has announced its first year of loss in over 30 years; as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic it has suffered a loss of $6.0 billion compared to a profit of $456 million for the previous year. Emirates Airline and Group Chairman and Chief Executive Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum said, “The COVID-19 pandemic continues to take a tremendous toll on human lives, communities, economies and on the aviation and travel industry.” In 2020-2021, Emirates was hit hard by the drop in demand for international air travel as countries closed their borders and imposed stringent travel restrictions. “Our top priorities throughout the year were the health and well-being of our people and customers, preserving cash and controlling costs and restoring our operations safely and sustainably. Emirates received a capital injection of $3.1 billion from our ultimate shareholder, the Government of Dubai. This has helped us sustain operations and retain the vast majority of our talent pool. Unfortunately, we still had to make the difficult decision to resize our workforce in line with reduced operational requirements.”

For the first time in the Group’s history, redundancies were implemented across all aspects of the business. As a result, the Group’s total workforce reduced by 31 per cent to 75,145 employees, representing over 160 different nationalities. In 2020-2021, the Group collectively invested $1.3 billion in new aircraft and facilities, the acquisition of companies and the latest technologies to position the business for recovery and future growth. It said that it also continued to invest resources towards environmental initiatives as well as supporting communities and incubator programmes that nurture talent and innovation to drive future industry growth.