Emirates bucks industry trend

Emirates has proved once again that it likes to buck airline-industry trends as it delivered a 62 per cent increase in profits at a time when most of the world's other large carriers are reporting profit warnings or huge losses.

Last week's result is incredible in an environment where fuel costs are rising dramatically and passenger numbers in the United States and Europe are stagnating or even falling.

Emirates increased its group profits by 54 per cent to Dh5.3 billion and airline profits by 62 per cent to Dh5bn. Meanwhile, the major US carriers reported a collective loss of a similar size in just the first three months of this year.

This is clearly an exceptional result from a rapidly growing airline but even Emirates admitted that it was "challenged" by the high price of oil. Fuel costs have risen to 30 per cent of total costs, which is in line with the rest of the industry. And this begs a question: if fuel costs are the same, ticket prices are the same and it flies roughly the same number of passengers per plane, how is Emirates able to increase profits and its rivals are not?

Emirates does not break down its financial data so we cannot be sure where the profits are coming from, but perhaps what we have witnessed with this latest set of results is "kitchen-sinking".

Companies throw everything into their accounts when they are trying to impress. And why would Emirates want to impress?

A cheeky guess might be that it is hoping to float this year.

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