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Subscribe to newsletters Subscribe Sign In BETA This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here MORE FROM FORBES Nov 8, 2019,06:00am EST How Billionaire Jim Simons Learned To Beat The Market—And Began Wall Street’s Quant Revolution Oct 28, 2019,06:00am EDT What A Prison Gang Leader Taught Ben Horowitz About Running A Business Oct 25, 2019,06:00am EDT Thomas Edison And The Birth Of The Stock Ticker Oct 4, 2019,09:30am EDT Jean-Georges: Portrait Of A Chef As A Young Man Sep 16, 2019,06:00am EDT Why There Are No Brave Old People In Finance Aug 27, 2019,06:41am EDT Deforestation Helped Make Brazil The World's Top Soy Producer [Infographic] Aug 26, 2019,06:16am EDT U.S. National Debt Is Growing Rapidly [Infographic] Edit Story ForbesBusiness EMIRATES AIRLINE FORCED TO CANCEL A QUARTER OF ITS FLIGHTS DUE TO RUNWAY MAINTENANCE IN DUBAI Dominic Dudley Former Contributor Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own. I write about business and politics in the Middle East and beyond Click to save this article. You'll be asked to sign into your Forbes account. Got it Jan 14, 2019,12:55pm EST This article is more than 5 years old. * Share to Facebook * Share to Twitter * Share to Linkedin Emirates Airline, the world’s largest international carrier, is to suspend 25% of its flights for a 45-day period in April and May, affecting passengers around the world who travel via the Gulf hub. The airline has had to take the drastic step because of the planned closure of Dubai International Airport’s southern runway for maintenance work between April 16 and May 30. That will reduce the airport to a single runway. “A significant number of scheduled Emirates flights will be impacted by the closure” of the runway, the airline said in a statement. “Many Emirates flights will be cancelled, re-timed or have the operating aircraft changed.” Emirates planes seen at Dubai International Airport on September 14, 2017. (Photo: GIUSEPPE... [+] CACACE/AFP/Getty Images) Getty PROMOTED An Emirates spokesperson did not say which routes would be affected. A previous report from industry specialist Routes Online had pointed to close to 500 flights being lost from Emirates’ weekly schedule, across 111 routes. That list of affected services included a number of routes that were expected to be cancelled entirely during the 45-day period, including the daily direct flight between Dubai and Newark. However, the airline spokesperson now says “there are no routes which are being suspended entirely over the runway closure period.” The reduced frequency on many routes means that fewer seats will be available, which could push up ticket prices. However, the impact will be reduced by Emirates’ decision to replace the Boeing 777 with larger Airbus A380 aircraft on some services. The spokesperson declined to say what impact the closures will have on the airline’s financial results for the year, saying “We are not releasing details on the financial impact of the runway closure at this time.” DailyDozen Forbes Daily: Get our best stories, exclusive reporting and essential analysis of the day’s news in your inbox every weekday. Sign Up By signing up, you accept and agree to our Terms of Service (including the class action waiver and arbitration provisions), and you acknowledge our Privacy Statement. Forbes is protected by reCAPTCHA, and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. You’re all set! Enjoy the Daily! More Newsletters You’re all set! Enjoy the Daily! More Newsletters However, relatively recent experience suggests it could be considerable. In 2014, Dubai International Airport operated with just one runway for 80 days to allow for maintenance work on the airfield. Emirates had to ground 19 aircraft during that period and cut its overall capacity by 9%, with services to 41 destinations affected. The disruption cost it an estimated $467m in lost revenues. At the time, Emirates had 231 aircraft in its fleet and carried 49 million passengers that year. It has since grown and now has 268 aircraft. Last year it carried more than 58 million passengers. The airline says that up to 48 of its aircraft will be grounded during the April-May runway closure. While revenues will be affected, some industry observers suggest that the airline will at least have a chance to focus on the profitability of the routes it continues to operate during the runway shutdown. “Emirates’ growth strategy has previously been focused on building share and presence in markets. Now that it has built scale worldwide, boosting utilization and profitability appear to be the priorities,” said Michael Stanat, director of global operations at SIS International Research. Analysts say that the disruption to Emirates’ services is all but unavoidable, given the need for runway maintenance to take place. Unlike some other major international airports, flights land and take off at Dubai International around the clock, so there is no regular downtime in which to schedule maintenance work. Dubai does have a second airport, but the logistics of moving some flights to Dubai World Central (DWC) may have proved too difficult for the airline, particularly as so many of its passengers only fly into Dubai in order to immediately connect with other onward flights. “We did evaluate the feasibility of moving some flights to DWC, however the decision was made not to do so,” said the spokesperson. “Our business model remains focused on our hub at DXB that offers efficient international connectivity.” However, the airline has deliberately picked a relatively quiet time of the year, to reduce the impact. The April-May period falls outside the main travel seasons in the northern and southern hemispheres and also coincides with Ramadan, which is typically a time of lower demand for flights in the Middle East region. “They’ve picked a time when there’s a bit of a lull for business and leisure travel, so that should have a reduced impact,” says John Strickland, founder of aviation consultancy firm JLS Consulting. “It’s unavoidable and they’re doing everything they can to minimize the impact.” Once the runway maintenance work is out of the way, there are further changes in the pipeline for the airline and its route network. Emirates says it is launching additional flights to a number of African destinations from June onwards, including the Moroccan commercial hub Casablanca, and four West African capitals: Abuja in Nigeria; Accra in Ghana; Conakry in Guinea and Dakar in Senegal. There will also be additional flights to a number of European cities during the summer, while capacity will be increased on flights to Boston, Massachusetts and the Scottish city of Glasgow with the deployment of the Airbus A380 on those routes. However, Emirates is scaling back on its services to the Chilean capital Santiago as well as Sydney and Perth in Australia. All this may presage a tougher future for Emirates, which saw profits slump badly in 2016/17, before recovering somewhat the following year. “There are other suggestions that the Dubai airline market may be over-saturated as Virgin Atlantic recently cut flights to Dubai due to declining profitability on those routes,” said Stanat. “There are several threats on the horizon such as geopolitical instability, oil price fluctuations, currency fluctuations, volatility in capital markets and concerns about a recession.” Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website. Dominic Dudley Dominic Dudley is a freelance journalist with more than two decades of experience in reporting on business, economic and political stories in the Middle East, Africa, ... Read More * Editorial Standards * Print * Reprints & Permissions Veradermics Cofounder Shares Their Unlikely Journey To Entrepreneurship Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration 0:00 Loaded: 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind liveLIVE Remaining Time -0:00 Share 1x Playback Rate Chapters * Chapters Descriptions * descriptions off, selected Captions * captions settings, opens captions settings dialog * captions off, selected Audio Track Picture-in-PictureFullscreen This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. 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