Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Having flown, ahem, first-class at the weekend on Emirates of Dubai, the world's fastest-growing intercontinental airline, and having scoffed excellent chardonnay and port along the way, one can see why readers of Conde Naste's Traveller would vote Emirates the best in business class in a recent survey. There's luxury and then there's Emirates is how we sum it up. Which brings us to Tokyo, where last May at the airline industry's biggest annual gathering, some 500 attendees had assembled for the keynote discussion. Suddenly, Leo van Wijk, vice chairman of the Air France-KLM Group grabbed the microphone and glowered at Tim Clark, president of Emirates. Van Wijk wanted to know how British-born Clark, running a carrier with $5 billion in revenue, could be spending $15 billion on 45 new Airbus A380s, the biggest and most expensive passenger planes in history. "Many of us have great doubts," van Wijk began, "about how Emirates is paying for these A380s when your cash flow isn't big enough to support it. So where do you get the money?"

According to Business 2.0 in an article titled "Rise of the Emirates Empire: Dubai's flag carrier has grown into one of the most successful —and despised —airlines in the world", everyone in the room knew what van Wijk was insinuating. The money might be coming from Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, the crown prince of Dubai, or from his uncle, Sheikh Ahmed, who runs Dubai's Department of Civil Aviation and serves as Emirates's chairman. These people are multibillionaires and their ambitions know no bounds. Under their guidance, Emirates has been adding capacity at rates seldom seen in commercial aviation (30 per cent in the past year alone) and expanding its fleet at an average rate of one new wide-body aircraft a month. Currently, the airline has 80 aircraft, including 29 Airbus A330-200s, 12 Boeing 777-300s, nine Boeing 777-200s, nine Airbus 340-500s, eight A340-300s, five Boeing 777-300ERs, one Airbus A310, one Airbus A310F and six Boeing 747 freighters. And then there's the order book. Along with the 45 Airbus A380-800s (including two A380Fs), Emirates is purchasing 25 Boeing 777-300ERs plus nine options, one Airbus A340-500, two A310-300Fs and 20 Airbus A340-600 Higher Gross Weight aircraft. You can see why the competition is angry and scared.

The internet being what it is, one can discuss all of this on the Airliners.net forum. This is an eye-opener for those who commute by bike, car or train and who speak or write English: "Re. the pax ex MUC, all I can say is that I was treated very rudely by an EK ground staff in DXB last August. So much so, that I prefer to discover what it's like to fly a QATAR AIRWAYS A300 to wherever, than be treated like a piece of dirt by a piece of dirt of EK ground staff in DXB." Got that? The high life has its own language.