Singapore Airlines has recently announced that it would reward its employees with a bonus worth eight months of salary, as per a report in CNN. The company said on Wednesday that it made a record-breaking $1.98 billion in net profit for the fiscal year 2023-2024. According to the airline’s financial statement, “the demand for air travel remained buoyant” throughout the year, helped by a recovery in North Asia as China, Hong Kong, Japan, and Taiwan completely reopened their borders following the epidemic.

The Skytrax World Airline Awards last year awarded the Singapore carrier the best airline in the world. Notably, the airline has won the highest prize in the awards’ 23-year history for the sixth time.

Singapore Airlines CEO Goh Choon Phong stated that the award was the hard work of the team who made “many sacrifices to ensure that SIA was ready for the recovery in air travel.” He said, “That has allowed us to emerge stronger and fitter from the pandemic.”

Meanwhile, the Emirates Group declared record-breaking profits recently and gave its workers bonuses equal to 20 weeks’ worth of pay. The compensation will be given to group members together with their May paycheck.

Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, Chairman and CEO of Emirates Airline and Group, thanked the Emirates Group staff for their “heroic efforts” in an email obtained by Khaleej Times. In his letter, he praised their commitment, “for powering our collective ambitions and for achieving them, you deserve every dirham of the 20-week profit share.”

With notable profit and sales improvements for Emirate and Dnata in the last year, the group’s overall employment increased by 10% to 112,406, marking its greatest workforce to date. The workers represent more than 170 different nationalities and are dispersed throughout 84 countries.

This artist’s rendering provided by the government of Dubai shows plans for Al Maktoum International Airport at Dubai World Central in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
| Photo Credit: AP

Dubai International Airport, the world’s busiest for international travel, will move its operations to the city-state’s second, sprawling airfield in its southern desert reaches “within the next 10 years” in a project worth nearly $35 billion, its ruler said on April 29.

Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s announcement marks the latest chapter in the rebound of its long-haul carrier Emirates after the coronavirus pandemic grounded international travel. Plans have been on the books for years to move the operations of the airport known as DXB to Al Maktoum International Airport at Dubai World Central which had also been delayed by the repercussions of the sheikhdom’s 2009 economic crisis.

“We are building a new project for future generations, ensuring continuous and stable development for our children and their children in turn,” Sheikh Mohammed said in an online statement. “Dubai will be the world’s airport, its port, its urban hub and its new global centre.” The announcement included computer-rendered images of curving, white terminal reminiscent of the traditional Bedouin tents of the Arabian Peninsula. The airport will include five parallel runways and 400 aircraft gates, the announcement said. The airport now has just two runways, like Dubai International Airport.

The financial health of the carrier Emirates has served as a barometer for the aviation industry worldwide and the wider economic health of this city-state. Dubai and the airline rebounded quickly from the pandemic by pushing forward with tourism even as some countries more slowly came out of their pandemic crouch.

The number of passengers flying through DXB surged last year beyond its total for 2019 with 86.9 million passengers. Its 2019 annual traffic was 86.3 million passengers. The airport had 89.1 million passengers in 2018 — its busiest-ever year before the pandemic, while 66 million passengers passed through in 2022.

Earlier in February, Dubai announced its best-ever tourism numbers, saying it hosted 17.15 million international overnight visitors in 2023. Average hotel occupancy stood at around 77%. Its boom-and-bust real estate market remains on a hot streak, nearing all-time high valuations.

But as those passenger numbers skyrocketed, it again put new pressure on the capacity of DXB, which remains constrained on all sides by residential neighborhoods and two major highways.

Al Maktoum International Airport, some 45 km (28 miles) away from DXB, opened in 2010 with one terminal. It served as a parking lot for Emirates’ double-decker Airbus A380s and other aircraft during the pandemic and slowly has come back to life with cargo and private flights in the time since. It also hosts the biennial Dubai Air Show and has a vast, empty desert in which to expand.

The announcement by Sheikh Mohammed noted Dubai’s plans to expand further south. Already, its nearby Expo 2020 site has been offering homes for buyers.

“As we build an entire city around the airport in Dubai South, demand for housing for a million people will follow,” Dubai’s ruler said. “It will host the world’s leading companies in the logistics and air transport sectors.” However, financial pressures have halted the move in the past. Dubai’s 2009 financial crisis, brought on by the Great Recession, forced Abu Dhabi to provide the city-state with a $20 billion bailout.

Meanwhile, the city-state is still trying to recover after the heaviest rainfall ever recorded in the UAE, which disrupted flights and commerce for days.

Dubai airport, one of the world’s busiest, witnessed major disruption for a third straight day Thursday after the heaviest rains on record drenched the desert United Arab Emirates.

Emirates, Dubai’s state-owned flagship airline, and sister carrier flydubai resumed check-ins after telling passengers to stay away on Wednesday when thousands of delayed passengers clogged the airport.

The airport, which handles more international passengers than any other, hopes to resume “something approaching normality” within 24 hours, Dubai Airport CEO Paul Griffiths told AFP.

Some 1,244 flights were cancelled and 41 were diverted on Tuesday and Wednesday after torrential rains flooded the Middle East financial centre including its homes, malls and offices, and highways.

Traffic congestion remained severe on Thursday, two days after the storms, with at least one major road completely blocked by water and multiple junctions cut off by flooding.

Climate experts say the rains, the UAE’s heaviest since records began 75 years ago, are consistent with changes caused by global warming.

“There’s no news here,” Karim Elgendy, Associate Director at the Buro Happold engineering consultancy and associate fellow at Britain’s Chatham House think tank, told AFP. 

“We are expecting an increase in variability of rainfall, which means more extreme events, more drought and an increase in intensity of rainfall when it does rain.

‘Deeply distressed’ 

Dubai airport has witnessed chaotic scenes with crowds of marooned travellers clamouring for information about their flights.

Even as Emirates and flydubai resumed check-ins, more than 200 departures were listed as delayed or cancelled on the airport’s website.

Griffiths said it was “challenging” to get the airport fully functional, with supplies and staff also held up on flooded roads.

“Getting supplies through, people and all of the necessary things to the airport to help the schedule recover, was a massive challenge because all of the roads were blocked,” he said in an interview.

“We just hope that the level of customer care that we’ve been able to provide will go some way to mitigate the impacts that we had to customers. But obviously we’re deeply distressed by all of the disruption and concern that we’ve created,” he added.

One elderly couple’s 14-hour flight from Brisbane took 24 hours on Tuesday after it was diverted, and they were then unable to reach their hotel because of the flooding.

“It’s just the start of our holiday and I feel like going home — and I don’t know how to do that either,” Julie, 72, told AFP through tears.

“When they landed the plane on this airfield that was deserted, there was no terminal, there were no other planes and I thought we had been hijacked by terrorists,” she added, without giving her surname.

Makeshift ferry

Although schools and public sector offices have been closed until next week, traffic returned to the roads with some motorists, finding their route blocked, driving the wrong way down highways.

Supermarkets had empty shelves as deliveries failed to arrive, and retail staff reported having to stay overnight or sleep at hotels because they could not get home.

“We’re working but the problem is we’re not receiving chicken,” said one employee at a chicken restaurant that had no chicken or fries on display.

“The delivery cannot come here because of the flood.”

In the Arjan district, a man used a canoe to paddle passengers across a flooded street.

With taxis hard to book and hail, private motorists were stopping at queues of people and offering rides for high prices.

British visitor Chris Moss, 30, was one of those looking for a cab as he tried to reach the airport and locate his lost luggage.

“When we arrived the baggage area was full of bags but my luggage was nowhere to be seen,” said Moss, whose plane, hastily booked after his original flight was cancelled, arrived five hours late.

“It was still on the plane because the baggage area was flooded and they couldn’t get the bags off.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)