Commercial viability to drive Emirates A380 future operations to Colombo

By Chamindra Wickramasinghe

For Emirates, the world’s biggest operator of the super-jumbo Airbus A380, flying it to 47 destinations and to be the possessor of the 100th A380 aircraft, the one-off flight to Colombo on August 14 was primarily introducing the airliner to the new market. 

It was also a mark of its long-standing relations with Colombo to pronounce it is ‘A380-ready’. The future of Colombo receiving this world’s largest passenger aircraft is however deemed to be driven by its commercial viability. Following the A380’s Colombo flight, Emirates Senior Vice President West Asia and Indian Ocean Ahmed Khoory, sitting for a media roundtable at the Dubai Emirates Group Headquarters, revealed the prospects and constrains for further A380 operations to Colombo.  

Commercial viability 

“Why not” there will be A380s deployed to Colombo, even by the end of the year, if commercially viable, was Khoory’s view.

“It was a one-off flight in our calendar and meant to be introducing the A380 to the new market. But if the situation gets better and if we believe that it is commercially viable to operate this super-jumbo aircraft to Colombo, we would,” he said.  

“It is about how much is made out of each A380 aircraft; but if the seat factor is like what we had, I think it is commercially viable.” 

The August 14 Airbus A380 Colombo flight EK 654 had 550 passengers on board from Dubai and as flight EK 655, it flew back 518 adults, six infants and 27 crew to Dubai on the same day. 

Unfortunately, the iconic super-luxury twin-deck aircraft – First and Business Classes occupying the upper deck and Economy below – is meant to be for long-haul flights and Emirates considers financially and revenue wise the A380 will not add much value on the short sector. Nevertheless, leveraging Emirates’ existing operations, possibilities are there for Colombo to enter the A380 network to connect to East. 

“We have a big operation in Colombo. We have non-stop to Colombo. We have via Colombo to Male, to Singapore. I think Colombo for us is a hub for some other operations. There is positivity. May be that is a hint for the authorities that the A380 might be going to Singapore from there. Everything is possible.”

Presently, three-class configured Emirates Boeing 777-300s operate a total of 34 flights a week from Colombo – 27 flights westward to Malé and Dubai and seven eastward to Singapore, connecting onwards to Melbourne, Australia.

Calling Colombo a market that connects “big time” for Emirates from the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) as well as Europe, which Emirates mainly operates with A380s, connecting Colombo thus to its A380 network in the future would be to facilitate passengers on a constant A380 journey from East to West via Dubai, Emirates’ birthplace and hub, fulfilling too its strategy of pushing Dubai as a stopover destination.  
“From Dubai, up to Europe, we have many A380 operations – London Heathrow and Paris for example. So we wanted the constant journey for the people who travel out of Colombo to the third and fourth regions – which are Dubai and even beyond Dubai, to experience the A380 constantly. That was one of the main reasons why we wanted to connect Colombo into the A380 – to serve Europe as well as back to Colombo. But it’s all driven by the commercial viability of the aircraft,” he said.   

Although Emirates has no “immediate plans” with Sri Lanka, Khoory said Emirates is always open to opportunities. 

The maiden A380 Colombo flight was considered even financially satisfactory for it went “packed in and out”, owing to the enticed A380 enthusiasts with effective marketing, despite the short announcement.  

“The first trip in my opinion was good. If you see the announcement date and the day we operated the flight, it was very short. I think it is an experience, yes, plus it is something they wanted to feel – how this aircraft looks like. The number (bookings) was going up every day. Of course, this flight was managed properly – marketing wise.”
Testing infrastructure

Bringing Airbus A380 to Bandaranaike International Airport, Emirates was also testing Colombo’s new aviation infrastructure, including the rehabilitated runway at a cost of US $ 50 million, which increased the runway’s width to 75 metres from 60 meters, to be able to accommodate A380s. 

As to Khoory, “everything met positively”; at the time, however, he was yet to receive the technical analysis done by the Emirates Engineering team on the A380’s 
Colombo visit.  

“Of course we wanted to test the airport, test the ground handling, test the runway itself, whether it is compatible to the A380 aircraft. The first trip in my opinion was good but I am still waiting for the Engineering report. Engineering wise they were checking the runway, checking the ground handling, checking the timing of passenger run out. They have their own checks.” 

He appreciated the support extended by the local authorities: civil aviation, airport and government authorities and immigration and Customs. 

“The minister was very positive. We are very happy and satisfied about the support the team got in Colombo. Mainly I felt that the people are very excited.” 

Emirates has also noted unprecedented response to the Colombo flight with ‘likes’ on FaceBook on the very day of the flight.  

In the South Asian region, Emirates operates only one scheduled A380 – to Bombay,  Khoory said.

Hub status 

Responding to a question whether Colombo can be a transit hub or aviation hub like Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the years to come, Khoory showed it involves political will in Sri Lanka.   

“Commercially, if we got the rights to fly from Colombo to Bangkok, that’s for us is a very good sign – basically now the runway is compatible for bigger aircraft. We can entertain those traffic out of Colombo and into Colombo. So commercially, I can see a lot of potential. But politically, it is driven by your government.”

The standing between Emirates and the Dubai government was revealed. 

“Our leaders are very much in line with the vision of Emirates. We are also in line with the vision of the government. Here we get lots of support from the government to open up and bring more business to Dubai,” he said. 

“Always the national carrier would put restrictions and hurdles. Even we do, but Dubai’s vision is different. We have an open-skies policy. So, you bring as much as you can or take as much as you can. But most of the countries around the world have a very restricted policy, specially for an airline like Emirates, when it has a fantastic product.”
Khoory called Emirates’ partnership with Sri Lanka a good story to talk about and the airline is doing “very well” in managing its business with Colombo. 

“We have a very good relationship with the airport authorities as well as the Transport Ministry. This aircraft was a good example. In some countries we are even restricted to fly A380s. However, with Sri Lanka we still have a lot of positive relationship. The bilateral we have now suits the operations between Dubai and Colombo. We are restricted in terms of number of flights. We have no restrictions in brining any type of aircraft.”   

Emirates’ economic contribution to Sri Lanka is multifaceted. Its 31 years of operations in Sri Lanka has led to employing nearly 1,300 Sri Lankans, of whom 160 work as cabin crew on flights around the world.

“We add economically a lot of value to the country in operating flights and brining massive passenger loads out of Europe, the US and Middle East into Colombo and vice versa; we are bringing lots of cargo as well to the economy.”

Emirates has also seen a significant increase in tourist inflow into Colombo over the past few years. 

“You are doing lots of hard work for the country. A lot of resorts have been opened. This will bring more investors and tourists into the country, which looks positive. That will help not only Emirates, even other airlines to operate into Colombo.”

Even though traditionally tourists to Sri Lanka have been low-end and package tourists, now because Sri Lanka is opening up more property for the hospitality business, his opinion was Emirates would be able to fly more high-end, premium class passengers to Sri Lanka in the near future. 

Emirates developments 

“Ours is a very top product,” Khoory said and quoted Sir Tim Clark – President Emirates Airline – in 1986, who had said, “I will never compromise with our product. My product has to be the best”, which has driven Emirates in its product and brand development.   
“So, from that time, we felt that our product, even in difficult times, maintained the same standard. We never compromised our product; we even made it better. We believe, to maintain our customer, we have to provide the same product or even better.

We never compromise the safety and security of our passengers and our crew. We also follow all the rules and regulations of other countries, which impose certain restrictions on nationalities, certain types of aircraft. The region is in tension at this time. But we are managing our business.”

The airline has weathered the hard times yield-wise too. “We see lots of drop in yield over the last two years. This is an industry problem, not only for Emirates. The problem for Emirates is our product is so expensive to create. We spend so much on product, on the aircraft type, on the interior type, catering type, even the entertaining system, so that all have a cost.

 

 

“ We add economically a lot of value to the country in operating flights and brining massive passenger loads out of Europe, the US and Middle East into Colombo and vice versa; we are bringing lots of cargo as well to the economy

Our product value is very high, so I cannot afford to sell that cheap. End of the day, we are managing our business bringing the cost down; the good part is the fuel also went down, currency is going down – so everything worked positively for Emirates.”

In the years past, despite the numerous issues the airline faced – air traffic to face disease problems – he said, “The beauty of Emirates is, we can overcome them quickly. We have an expert team that will bring these things back to normal quickly. Also this is the vision of our leaders in Dubai.”

Among the latest product enhancements launched is the new onboard lounge – mostly on the Emirates Airbus A380 First and Business Classes – which has been changed in terms of design, introducing a new bar concept in the upper deck.

He talked about the important role Dubai, as a destination, played in the development of the airline. It was attributed to the government of Dubai for making the proper infrastructure, which made not only Emirates Airline successful, but also every airline came to Dubai.

The government “invested in the infrastructure of the airport, one of the most sophisticated airports today. We have a very strong hub in Dubai, which connects East to West and West to East. That itself is a lot of edge to Emirates Airline.”

He believes Dubai supported the aviation industry immensely through many infrastructure developments in terms of hospitality – hotels, restaurants, from top to even mid-standard. “So all this helped us to grow faster than before and to make sure that people come to see Dubai and see how Dubai looks like. Dubai played a big part.”
Khoory marvelled at the advancement of technology in the airline and aviation business having first flown to Colombo in Airbus A310 in 1990s as a management trainee and last, 30 years later, on August 14, taking the same flight but in a bigger aircraft – A380. He mirrored how far Sri Lanka has come over the years.