Emirates (EK, Dubai International) is "nowhere near confident enough" to commit to taking deliveries of all of its ordered aircraft, outgoing president Tim Clark said during a webinar hosted by the Arabian Travel Market.
Clark underlined that the airline needs to "keep cash where it needs to be" as a matter of "surviving the present" before it can think about future deliveries. He underlined that "the economics, the cash flows, the bottom line" will inform the carrier's commitments to "buy a hundred of this or a hundred of that".
According to the ch-aviation fleets module, Emirates currently has 203 undelivered aircraft on firm order from Airbus and Boeing, comprising fifty A350-900s, eight A380-800s, fourteen B777-8s, 101 B777-9s, and thirty B787-9s. Its sister carrier flydubai (FZ, Dubai International) has orders for a further 237 B737 MAX, including at least sixty-five B737-8s and fifty B737-10s.
Clark added that for the time being, Emirates does not need the bulk of its already delivered fleet. But, while it could technically restart full-scale operations within 48 hours, he does not foresee a recovery to pre-crisis levels for another four years.
"I think probably by the year 2022/23, 2023/24 we will see things coming back to some degree of normality and Emirates will be operating its network as it was and hopefully as successfully as it was," he said.
He anticipated that the initial recovery would be slow until a vaccine for COVID-19 virus is widely available, in which case the industry could see signs of a substantial uptick before the summer 2021 season. This uptick would, however, not compensate fully for the demand lost during recent weeks.
