COO Interview: Emirates' Al Redha on DAS2025 Orders

DUBAI — DAS2025 saw the home airlines, Emirates (EK) and flydubai (FZ), steal the show with several announcements over the week. On Wednesday, we sat down with Adel Al Redha, Deputy President & Chief Operations Officer at Emirates.

Al Redha commenced his career with EK in Engineering and has since held various positions across the Group. Today, he oversees the operations department, including the Dubai hub and Worldwide Network Operations, Flight Operations, Emirates Engineering and Fleet Procurement, Inflight Services and Training, Worldwide Airport Passenger Services, and Emirates Group Dubai Airports Project Management. He also heads Emirates Group Security, Sustainability and Environment, and Dubai Government Affairs.

Commenting on the order for additional Boeing 777-9s: “This is an incremental order and does not affect our long-term retirement plan. The newly ordered Boeing 777s will not enter service before 2034, which justifies our extensive cabin refurbishment plan, including replacing or upgrading software and flight entertainment, as well as installing the new Starlink connectivity.”

EK plans to reactivate its parked A380s to support its network, aiming to fly up to 116 A380s by the end of next year. Regarding the higher capacity and the newly announced Boeing 777-10 feasibility study, Adel commented:

“We cannot afford to shrink our capacity. We are forced to go down that way with the phasing out of the Airbus A380, and the aircraft that comes closer is the Boeing 777-9. A stretched variant of the Boeing 777X will provide us with extra capacity with a similar range as the Boeing 777-9, depending on how much the aircraft gets stretched. We are happy that Boeing is listening to the market’s needs.”

Emirates has options to convert the Boeing 777-9s to the shorter -8 variant or the potential longer -10 variant. “Obviously, certain lead times are needed, and it's good to have that option in hand. The team will be evaluating, in due course, but there is no specific conversion number at this stage,” Adel added. “If a refreshed version of the A380 with similar capacity should be made, we would definitely be interested.” He continued.

The A350-1000 has failed to meet EK's requirements due to reduced on-wing performance. EK’s interest in the type has not vanished over time, and the airline is working with Airbus and Rolls-Royce to monitor the situation. “We are not in the position to place an order yet,” Adel said.

Continuing the topic of engines, Adel mentioned that the Boeing 777-9 will commence a testing campaign in the region to study the GE9X performance. Still on the Airbus side, Adel mentioned that EK is not interested in the A330neo due to the significant commitment for the A350-900.

On EK’s Boeing 787 backlog, Adel commented: “They are part of our backlog with Boeing. It could work on point-to-point routes, but we are not in a hurry to make a decision regarding the Dreamliner subfleet.”

Regarding the upcoming fleet configuration, EK will arrange the Boeing 777X in both a three-class and a four-class layout for different missions. The airline is not interested in following the trend of developing a “more premium” row in Business Class, and it is expected that each seat will feature identical specifics. 

“We don’t discriminate within the same travel class onboard,” Adel told Airways. The upcoming 777X fleet will be equipped with Starlink from day one, in line with the announcements made at the airshow. Both EK and FZ will benefit from being under the same roof at the new DWC airport, meeting the D33 Agenda target of 400 destinations.