Emirates Airline has promoted two long-time management team members to top leadership positions as president Tim Clark indicated he will stay in his position for longer.
The airline named Adel Al Redha as its new COO and Adnan Kazim as its new chief commercial officer. Sheikh Majid Al Mualla is running the company’s government affairs operation as divisional SVP-international affairs.
Kazim is filling a crucial vacancy in Emirates’ top management following the departure of Thierry Antinori earlier in 2019. Kazim has previously led Emirates’ strategy and was acting chief commercial officer for the past few months. Antinori has meanwhile joined Qatar Airways as head of strategy and transformation.
Clark indicated he has no plans to leave soon. “It is a hobby, it is good fun and intellectually I can still do the job,” he said.
The new leaders join Emirates in difficult times and after the airline reported a 43% profit drop to AED2.3 billion ($620 million) for fiscal 2018/2019 ended March 31.
However, Clark said Sept. 4 that “we are quite a long way ahead of where we thought we would be. We had a very strong summer.” The second half of its current fiscal year “is looking stronger than forecast. If [the price of] fuel goes south, we have a fighting chance of it being a better year than last year.” Among other things, Emirates has generated 50% more cash than expected since the beginning of April.
Clark said the airline has become “smarter about aligning capacity to the situation more quickly.” It has pulled capacity from markets that were underperforming. It would still like to add seats to India, Germany and Africa. Emirates continues “to be interested in more points in Asia, but that is maybe not so smart with the Boeing 777-300ER.” Clark believes the carrier can economically serve more destinations in that region once it has taken delivery of its first Airbus A330neos, A350s and Boeing 787s…
