Emirates has always 'underblocked' its flights. While the headwinds going to Europe in the winter make the flight time considerable longer, this should be accounted for in the published block times. That is not the case. Back when the Nagoya flight was operating, it was not uncommon for the flight time to be 12 hours, while the block time was 11 hours. So before the flight even left the gate, it was already an hour late arriving.

There are probably two reasons for this. One, the crews get paid by scheduled block time, so any time the aircraft is late, there are no additional labour costs. This is offset in other countries such as USA by active monitoring of on time performance by DOT. Since that is not the case in the UAE, and Emirates does not have to compete with other carriers on the basis of on time performance, the flights are routinely late.