iahphx

I'm not sure how much most of you guys know about airline finance, but there seems to be something fundamentally illogical with Emirates' business plan. They -- and other Middle Eastern airlines -- seem to be able to place enormous airplanes on long thin routes where no other airline could possibly make money by providing such service. And then they spend more money per passenger on service than other airlines spend.

Like take this latest USA expansion:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-1...tml?cmpid=yhoo

As most of us know, the economics of the A380 aren't terribly attractive to most airlines. Indeed, no USA airline has bought one. The non-Middle East airlines that fly them tend to fly them on very heavily travelled routes -- where the economics of offering 600+ seats on a flight could make sense. There are only a handful of such A380 flights from the USA to the much larger European market. Yet, Emirates flies these planes on "long thin routes" like Houston to Dubai.

You'd have to be smoking something (as Gordon Bethune would say) to think there are more than 600 pax a day who want to fly from Houston to Dubai. Nor is Dubai a logical connecting point to pretty much anyplace other than the Middle East and India.

So where is the money coming from for this service? Are the books of Emirates and other Middle Eastern airlines audited the way Western companies are audited? There must be some massive subsidies coming into these companies somehow, because there's no logic to this business plan.

Dave Noble

That an A380 is not attractive to US carriers therefore means that it is a bad aeroplane and therefore the airline must be somehow operating fraudulently?

I wouldn't be using US carriers as the leading lights in ability to run airlines

Emirates Airline has made a profit each year for 25 years; perhaps it is EK that is doing it right and might be better looking at how it runs an airline as a basis for others

Emirates202

LOL

So just because other airlines might not be able to afford to fly A380's to as many places as EK does, they're a financial scam?
And you examples aren't very logical. Houston is home to oil companies, many of which fly to the middle east. And EK connect people to Africa, Asia, etc, not just India.

avsecman

The economics of aviation are not attractive to any sane investor

iahphx

You obviously don't know much about airline economics. The USA airlines could afford to buy any airplane they'd want to. They don't buy A380s because they believe (correctly, I think) that having to sell 600+ seats on an aircraft would depress the average yield for these tickets. There just aren't that many places in the world where there's strong demand to fly 600 people at the same time. You generally increase yield by offering the most convenient flight times for biz travelers. That's why, for example, AA flies a dozen times a day between LAX and JFK on relatively small aircraft.

Again, that's ignorance. The USA airlines are now among the most profitable companies in the world -- in any industry. Investors who have recognized this opportunity instead of following the herd have made fortunes.

That said, the USA airlines would certainly NOT be among the most profitable companies if they operated the way Emirates does. Indeed, I assume they'd lose billions.

avsecman

Take a look at aviation over a longer period. Not just the NOW. It is a poorly performing sector that attracts unprecedented investment as it is viewed as sexy or desirable (I will be the next Branson or Haji-Iannaou). Any sane investor would invest in other sectors. There is money to be made but is a lot easier in other sectors....

Dave Noble

I think that the people running Emirates do know just a tad about how to run an airline. They have been running a profitable airline for 25 consecutive years - unlike US carriers.

US airlines will do what they think is best for them; that doesn't mean that anything else is wrong

Taking, for example, AA - compare the number ond frequency of its international routes vs those of Emirates. I posit that there are a lot more international destinations serviced by Emirates than by most US carriers

CaptainEKAirbus

Where is the money coming for this service?

Well, EK does benefit from many advantages that its US or European counterparts might not, like the geographical location of Dubai; government friendly view of aviation; lower employee costs; and several others.

It's true that DXB-IAH could not sustain 600 passengers a day, but look at the connecting network at the end of DXB first. From DXB the most logical connections would be KHI, PEW, SKT, ISB, LHE, KBL, AMD, DEL, BOM, BLR, HYD, MAA, CCU, CCJ, TRV, COK, MLE, CMB, EBL, BGW, IKA, BSR, KWI, DMM, RUH, MED, JED, BAH, DOH, and MCT. Alone that's 30 destinations. So really, you should be calculating the traffic that travels between IAH and these 30 destinations, and looking at the market potential there. Therefore, relative to the capacity of the 354 seat 77W serving the DXB-IAH route today, if we assumed that 20% of the traffic on the flight was O&D, this would be 71 passengers were traveling from IAH to DXB. Breaking up the remaining 283 passengers by 30 destinations would give an average of 9 passengers going to each destination. Is this not feasible?

Looking at the O&D traffic for IAH in 2011, over 75,000 people flew between IAH-DXB on an O&D basis. That's an average of 205 passengers a day, yes a little higher than the 71 I assumed. Also in 2011, over 40,000 people flew between IAH-BOM on an O&D basis. That's an average of 109 people per day, also higher than the 9 passengers I assumed would need to make up the connecting feed for the flight.

In reality, because of EK's vast network of over 140 destinations, passengers from the IAH flight will connect onto more than just the 30 destinations I mentioned. But EK does have a huge geographical advantage of being so well positioned between huge traffic sectors like N. America to the Indian subcontinent.

Now that we've established 'where the money is coming from', I think it's time to look at why the money is coming from where it comes from.

Continuing to look at the IAH-DXB example, let's look at the most logical competitors for traffic from IAH-Middle East/Indian subcontinent:
-European legacies (BA, LH, KL, AF, ... )
-Local airlines (AI, 9W, ... )

In the case of European legacies, it comes down to the pure advantage that EK can price seats from IAH to these regions much cheaper than they can. Do you know why? Well, having a lower employee cost base is a major reason. EK group can pay extremely low wages for much of the manual labour that is required in aviation, anything from baggage handlers and check-in agents, to flight attendants. The market price for wages in manual labour jobs is significantly lower in DXB because of the large supply of people willing to undertake manual labour jobs to earn a little bit more than their origin. As a result, with these cost savings, the savings are translated into the lower fares where competition is high, or drive profit margins where competition is low.

Well one might argue, why can't AI/9W take advantage of these low employee costs? Well they can, and in fact they do. But AI is notoriously known as the worse run airline in the world, due to the political interference that the Government of India has on the running of the airline. Even Sir Tim Clark has said that Air India should be the most profitable airline in the world.

There's just a small summary of why EK is able to do what it does. There are a lot of factors I've missed out, but I'm sure others will continue where I've left off.

For the record, the figures are audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers every year. Speaking of which, the half-year profit should be announced sometime soon.

avsecman

What I will say, as I know operational persons on the ground at EK and other Gulf Carriers, is that many of them do believe it is a financial scam of some sort. Particularly at other Gulf Carriers, there is a belief that EK is a bubble about to burst...

I am not so convinced....

eternaltransit

Hi OP, the question you ask pops up here every few weeks in various forms so I hope I can give you a satisfactory answer.

First with regards to Emirates202's post and your reply to it - I think he refers to the profitability of the using the airframe on the route, not the actual cost of the airframe itself, and that EK's margin and cost base means that whilst it can fly on lower yields on a route, it can still be more profitable than other carriers that might fly the same airframe.

Anyway, I'll continue where CaptainEKAirbus left off

I think he's illustrated pretty well where DXBs network aggregating effect works - EK don't offer O&D to DXB really, in fact, not many people O&D to DXB from the US, it's pretty much the UK then Kuwait, according to MasterCard. This might be backed up by the fact that EK flies 14 flights a day to the UK and 5 A380s to LHR alone daily. EKs business model is about connecting traffic. The Indian subcontinent is an absolutely massive market and considering the local competition and EK is pretty much India's national carrier now, at least for the diaspora.

So, EK can fill A380s regularly - this has been shown by traffic statistics released by airports and you can anecdotally see this if you try and get on an A380 service ex-USA!

Your thesis is: larger capacity depresses yields and so how can EK make a profit? I assume by scam you mean massive state subsidy - this is the usual question that appears on this forum, and yes, EK takes big advantage of its local benefits - but it stops short of direct subsidy by the state (unlike other carriers in the region - Hi QR, EY)

Simple response: EKs cost base, both fixed and operational are much lower than many many carriers, both legacy and new competitors and approaches LCC levels of costs.

Operational costs first - contrary to popular opinion, EK doesn't receive fuel cost benefits directly. Dubai doesn't have much oil anyway and the Jet-A cost at DXB is paid by all carriers there. In fact in the past EK has fuelled at cheaper outstations...! However, there is a noticeable efficiency improvement in having a new fleet - and a fleet that flies long routes with efficient planes has a lower fuel cost per kilometer. EK planes are generally all brand new - no old 767s and 757s. The fleet is entirely wide body and usually less than 3-5 years old. That has a noticeable effect on fuel costs - a 2-5% saving on fuel costs compared to the competition in an industry with razor thin margins (c. 2-3%) is going to make you look really good.

Where EK benefits is: staff costs. As Dubai doesn't have much effective taxation, they don't need to offer salaries grossed up to have an attractive take home - contrast this to 30/40/50% tax burdens in other jurisdictions. EK offers free accommodation (which is built and owned in many cases by the Emirates Group), free healthcare, etc. etc. In fact the other thing that staff really need to buy is a mobile phone contract. So, a Captain on 400k USD doesn't cost the company 1 million USD. A cabin crew member on 25k-30k USD costs them 30k instead of 50-60k. You get the picture. Also, minimal to negligible retiree benefits to pay for.

They also have an incredibly good turnaround operation. Planes on the ground don't make any money. Their planes stay on the ground as little as possible - you don't have issues with crew deadheading or positioning, or airframes being out of position. We don't notice this, but when it happens on other carriers it costs them - and the costs add up on large fleets (like US carriers).

Whilst this doesn't really apply to the examples of long and thin routes as you mentioned, EK fly A380s to slot congested airports (LHR and JED spring to mind) - on those routes, there's so much demand that yields aren't depressed at all. In fact some people pay premiums to fly on the A380!

Fixed costs: one of the major fixed costs is obviously the purchase of new aircraft. Most of EKs airframes are leased - and EK is an excellent credit. You could argue that EK played a (small) part in propping up Dubai during its financial problems. For example: EK get massive discounts (e.g. 30% on an A380) and pay c.6.5% to lease. Other carriers find it hard to get deals of a similar quality.

So on the cost side, EK have very good structural advantages which makes some routes profitable whereas other carriers just can't do it. EK is quick to cut unprofitable routes (CRK for instance).

We touched on passengers. Let's not forget cargo - cargo operators are complaining that the Port Authority in NY/NJ wants to separate cargo from JFK and move it to upstate New York is going to cause them problems because cargo operators care a lot about network connectivity. DXB gives them an obvious advantage - and EK can therefore command premium pricing. Also the wide body fleet allows them to do things like transport high performance vehicles and all sorts of strange things (although I don't think that would be a thing to sustain a route for!).

Also of consequence but not so relevant to this discussion about route profitability is dnata (the airport services division), which is solidly profitable.

I hope that covers a variety of points which paints a picture of EK not being a scam - aka propped up by direct or indirect injections of cash, but actually a profitable and sustainable (at least until people stop transiting in Dubai) business.

ioto1902

All I know is that price is good, service is good, IFE is good, and A380 is a dream. That's all I care.
I would call it a scam if there's no plane when I turn in at the airport or if service is not as advertised. But that's never been the case. (And I fly EK at least 4 times per month)
Maybe they purchase fuel real cheap, maybe they pay personnel very low, maybe they don't have social security costs or taxes, maybe they have some secret unfair advantages, but that's called competition, and western countries shouldn't complain about the very rules they've set.
A380 are big ? Yes. But, from my experience, EK's A380 are almost always full.
So why should I pay more, have less service, be cramped in narrow space, having a 7 inch screen at 12 inch from my nose and take the thrill of not travelling because of some incomprehensible strikes (hello AF) ? No thanks.

iahphx

Thanks for the comments. But I remain 100% convinced that Emirates could not make money flying these flights from the USA. Dubai is simply an illogical connecting points for most destinations from the USA. As I said, the only major connecting market is India. Otherwise, the geography is simply wrong.

The population of Dubai is only 2 million -- about the same as Budapest which, to my knowledge, has zero nonstop flights to the USA from ANY city. On "real economics" -- the economics that would apply to a USA airline -- MAYBE this flight would work from NYC. That's about it.

Emirates does not partner with any of the 3 world alliances. That would cause most American businessmen to fly other airlines. There would also be a natural booking away from Middle East airlines: indeed, while I would appreciate the service on Emirates, I honestly wouldn't be looking for a reason to fly them to connect to someplace else. I think at least 95% of Americans would feel the same (and probably the majority of high elite status USA frequent flyers).

The vast majority of the cost of this route would be aircraft and fuel. I don't care what they pay their staff -- it would be largely immaterial.

There is obviously squirrelly mathematics going on with these Middle East airlines. If the rest of the world operated like this, there would be several dozen of A380 flights from the USA to Europe every day. This level of service doesn't exist because no one is picking up the tab for it.

Emirates202

But what you're not getting is that they do make money on flights to USA. JFK is receiving a 3rd daily A380 service as of March, mainly because F and J sell out really quickly. While Y may not be full, they still seem to be making money.
And DXB being an illogical connecting point is your opinion. I know many others, including myself who fly from the USA to Africa/Asia via DXB.
Regarding DXB having a small population, it is widely known that only a small percentage of EK's passengers are O&D to Dubai. EK traffic is mostly connecting passengers.
Just because you might think it is illogical to connect in DXB, everyone else doesn't.
You also think that business people won't fly EK because they aren't part of an alliance. I know businessmen from Atlanta that fly to JFK, then to DXB on EK, over nonstop on DL, even as Diamond Medallions. Same for businessmen in IAD that were 1K's, they used to fly to JFK to fly EK before EK started flying to IAD.

This whole thread is based on your opinion, which you are trying to make sound like facts.

eternaltransit

A counterpoint to your assertion about connection points: to get ex-USA to the Indian Subcontinent, Greater Middle East and SE Asia you need to have one connection point at least. This is either going to be in Europe, Korea/Japan or the Middle East. I think the vast majority of travellers don't really care where that is going to be - and they are willing to do a small backtrack if it's going to be the ME. One big route is East Coast to SE Asia. There is a good reason why BKK is the busiest outstation for QR, EY and EK and there is a lot of traffic originating in the USA for there as going the Pacific route is just about the same amount of time. As EK have a lower cost base, they can undercut on the routes and still make more money per kilometer than legacy carriers.

If you do buy the argument that people from the USA just don't connect in the ME then let's look at O&D traffic to DXB. Have you seen the prices ex-USA for terminating in DXB? F works out at 16k USD ex-JFK. ex-IAD next month is showing EK at 2x the cost of AA F and 3x the cost of DL, 1.5x the cost of BA/AF That is significant premium. Combine that with the capacity on these flights and the load factor of 80% and I think. I think it is unfair to lump in EK with the other two big Gulf airlines, because I definitely see your argument with QR fares - they are half the price of the US carriers. So there is definitely a premium for non-stop that is being paid by people in the US - or their companies, because let's face it for fares like this, the bulk of the revenue is coming from people who have no choice in carrier.

And as for your comment about staff costs being immaterial - I would hardly call the 2nd biggest cost that all airlines, not just EK have, that is, staff costs, immaterial. This includes retiree benefits: the fact that retiree obligations at US legacy carriers were a major factor in their bankruptcy (before and after) I think, is testament to that. The basic fact of airline economics in the past 50 years has shown that labor conditions and therefore costs has been one of the major impediments to profit margin: the success of LCC shows this.

CaptainEKAirbus

It would be very interesting if EK ever publicly released figures on connecting traffic that fed their L/H flights to the US. You'd actually be very surprised on the market. An example, on any given day there's people boarding the LAX flight to go to JNB via DXB. Why they fly via DXB instead of other points like ATL/JFK/LHR which are probably all shorter? Probably comparable fares, maybe FF status, maybe simply because EK has better service than the other airlines that compete for this traffic? Like I previously talked about, with 30 'logical' connecting points, only 9 people going to each point has to be onboard a flight. Now think about it, add in other destinations that EK can fly passengers to cheaper than it's competitors and suddenly you have 50 connecting points that are fed from one US flight. Now that number reduces just about 6 passengers per destination.

But that's not the point; if you're bringing economics into this, you should know there are a lot of factors that play into the demand for air travel between two countries. Whether it be GDP per capita, historical ties, business ties (Oil?), ... you cannot compare the traffic to the US from DXB and BUD. BUD doesn't have the network of destinations connected to it, whereas DXB does.

Probably pretty close to 95% of Americans would also be price sensitive enough to want to fly the cheapest route from point A to point B. Therefore, when EK can offer the best price from Point A to Point B even if it's via Dubai, they will win over these passengers. Just look at the trend of American legacies now sinking to the offerings of LCC on domestic services. As mentioned previously, there's a variety of contributing factors that make EK the cheapest by reducing it's costs to levels that American legacies just could not afford.

In the financial year ending 2014, 13.1% of EK's cost were made up from employee costs. How is that not relevant? That's the second largest cost component behind fuel! I'm confident that one of the principle reasons why EK can keep it's costs lower is largely because of the lower salaries it can pay its workers.

Don't forget that there is still large percentage of the traffic traveling from N. America to Europe isn't O&D. As I previously implied, carriers like BA, LH, KL, AF, ... are also carrying traffic from N. America to MENA / Indian subcontinent regions too. It's even been quoted by AC's CEO that their flight from YOW-FRA simply would not be profitable, and thus operate without the feed that FRA provides to the MENA region on LH metal. Think of it this way, the ME3 including EK are just redistributing the same traffic through their respective HUB airports instead of going through Europe. The ME3 also have a significantly smaller number of daily flights to the US from their respective HUBs by consolidating traffic onto bigger aircraft.

Believing that every passengers that boards a flight from N. America to Europe is simply an O&D passenger is the wrong approach to this.