Emirates' Group President selected as 'Personality of the Year'

Maurice Flanagan, Emirates' Group President and Vice Chairman, has been honoured for his role in the development of Dubai-based Emirates Airline into a global aviation force.

Mr Flanagan was selected by leading aviation magazine Flight International, as its Personality of the Year. The distinction was announced in Singapore during a glittering ceremony at the Millenia Ritz-Carlton Hotel attended by over 400 aviation industry leaders and guests, on the occasion of the magazine's 2004 Annual Aerospace Awards.

Announcing the award, Flight Group Editor Kieran Daly said it was made in recognition of the pivotal role that Mr Flanagan has played in the "expansion and constant strong financial showing of Emirates". 

He applauded Mr Flanagan's 50-year contribution to commercial aviation, including his "19 years' dedication to Emirates" airline, which he helped to plan and to establish in October 1985.

The award comes on the heels of Mr Flanagan's 2003 golden jubilee in the aviation business, spanning the entire second half of aviation's century-old history. The 100th anniversary of the first successful flight by a self-powered airplane, achieved by the Wilbur and Orville Wright brothers in North Carolina, was observed on December 17, 2003.

Mr. Flanagan joined BOAC (predecessor of the present-day British Airways) in 1953, fifty years after the Wright brothers' historical flight and after having served in the UK's Royal Air Force as a navigation officer. In 1978 he moved to Dubai, where he ran Dnata, today the second largest of the Emirates Group companies. 

Seven years later the government of Dubai threw him a once-in-a-lifetime challenge to play a key role in the creation of a new airline, and he became Managing Director of Emirates from its launch.

Mr Flanagan said: "I was deeply honoured by the award, which I accepted on behalf of the entire Emirates Group team. It is a wonderful recognition of our growth record, which was only possible through the outstanding performance and dedication of every Group team member - on the ground and in the air, at our home base of Dubai and around the world. The Emirates' achievements would not have been possible but for their efforts."

Emirates Group Chairman HH Sheikh Ahmed Bin Saeed Al-Maktoum applauded the announcement and said: "Maurice has played a pivotal role in the development of Emirates into a truly global brand and business.

"This award is well deserved and also should make every Emirates team member proud of their contributions, because everyone in the company plays a part in the Group's continued success and in keeping us ahead of the competition.

He added: "Maurice has been instrumental in keeping Emirates focussed on what really matters - providing the best possible service for our customers. In doing so, the Emirates team has enabled us to become the world's fastest growing mainline international airline, and the award underlines this achievement."

Under Mr. Flanagan's 19-year stewardship of Emirates, the airline has gone from two aircraft serving three destinations in India and Pakistan to a 63-strong fleet flying passengers and cargo to 74 destinations in 52 countries.

Presently the fleet is expanding at an average rate of more than one aircraft per month and more than 100 additional passenger and freighter airplanes are on its order book, worth a combined US$26 billion in list prices, for delivery over the next decade.

Emirates' consistent double-digit growth every year has enabled it to roughly double in size every four years, while adding an average of four new destinations per year. All along it has shown a profit and paid a dividend to its owners, the government of Dubai, every year but the second one.

In the last decade alone, Mr. Flanagan presided over an Emirates that grew in passengers carried to 8.5 million in the financial year 2002-03, from 1.6 million in 1992-93, and managed a five-fold-plus revenue expansion to Dhs 9.6 billion, from 1.8 million. 

In the same period, cargo transported went up to well over half-a-million tons, from just under 62,000 tons, the airline workforce reached more than 10,000, from nearly 3,500, and bottom-line operating profit zoomed to Dhs 1.0 billion, from 1.6 million.

Mr. Flanagan has built a reputation throughout the airline industry as a fierce supporter of un-protected competition and often offers Emirates' success as an example of its benefits. Under the open-skies policies upheld by the government of Dubai, more than 100 airlines offer services from the city's airport to more than 170 destinations worldwide, in un-hindered and fair competition. 

He's also a staunch believer in Emirates' un-protected financial status because, as he put it in a recent interview, "airlines that are subsidised are always less efficient", and "the biggest single subsidy is protection against competition."