Executive Summary 3
1.0 Introduction (Ahmed) 4
2.0 Planning (Ahmed) 5
3.0 Organization (Abdullah) 7
4.0 Controlling (Mohammed) 8
5.0 Leadership 10
6.0 Conclusion 12
7.0 Recommendation 13
References 15
Appendix A. Emirate Airlines Organizational Structure 17
Executive Summary
The Emirates group is made up of Emirates Airlines owned by the government of Dubai and is based on the busiest airport within the Middle East, and the Dubai National Air Transport Association (DNATA). According to Nagraj (2013), the Emirates Airlines has been a success story ever since the commencement of its activities in 1985 and has continuously recorded huge growths and profits. Over the years, Emirates has been rapidly revolutionizing its operations with numerous assignments transforming the airline into a state-of-the-art fleet, Maurice Flanagan, who was formerly part of the Royal air force in the British airways, became the chairman of the new airline. He however moved to Dubai National Air Transport to serve as an assistant general sales manager for a term period of two years. Sheik Ahmed bin Saeed Maktoum who was a nephew of the ruler of Dubai became the new chairman at 27 years old.
The primary focus of the Emirates airline and its employees is to provide excellent customer services to its customers, while providing the employees with benefits such as sick leave, paid maternity, as well as comprehensive health plans.
This report majorly focuses on the organization of the company and how operations are carried out, it also focuses on controlling, and explaining how various activities are controlled from the control room and finally how planning is made for all activities in this airline company.
Introduction (Ahmed)
On October 25th 1985, Emirates Airlines was founded by Maurice Flanagan. It is a successful airline company fully owned by the government of Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates as contrary to most other successful airlines, which are owned by individuals or companies. It began with the leasing of two aircrafts that is the Boeing737 and Airbus 300 B4 as attested by Browne (2013), a clear indication that there was a great importance to delve into the success path completely. The Emirates Airlines is the largest in the Middle East and operates over 3300 flights each week across 6 continents (Emirates Identity Authority, 2014), to more than 144 cities, from Dubai International Airport. It's been quality oriented since the first days until today (Henderson, 2006). It is also known to provide cargo services through the Emirates Sky Cargo division.
Emirate airlines stands out to be the largest international carrier in the world, while in terms of revenue, it is ranked seventh in the world. In the Middle East, it takes the first position in terms of number of passengers carried, fleet size as well as revenue. With all the success stories about this airline, it would also be of importance to note that it carries out 4 of the world longest non-stop commercial flights from Dubai to Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas/ Fort Worth as well as Huston. It was conceived in 1985 after Gulf Air begun to reduce its services to Dubai, with a backup from Dubai’s royal family and a provision of two airlines on a lease from Pakistan International Airlines. It was required to run autonomous of government’s financial support apart from the $10 million provided as startup capital (Airlines, 2015).
According to the company's annual report 2014-2015, the Emirates Group has its presence in six continents with 84,000 staff members from over 160 nationalities. The financial year ending 31 March 2015 saw the Group attain its 27th successive year of profits, despite facing numerous external challenges (Airlines, 2014). While undertaking major investments in the business, the Group reported business growth and a steady revenue .The airline company prides itself as being the largest operator of the Boeing 777 and Airbus A380, has over time provided outstanding and exceptional services as well as recorded fast growth, with regular profits thereby making an enthusiastic brand name for itself, and winning many awards including the 2013 World Best Airline awards (Mouawad, 2011). Emirates Airlines scooped the top position as the Skyrax presented.
Planning (Ahmed)
Emirates airlines operates on a vision of making civil aviation safe , susatinable and leading. Its mission is to deliver world's best in flight experience. The objectives of Emirates include retaining and improving recurrent business class travellers market share, to increase market share from 40 to 55percent by end of 2016, to tap the market for low cost carriers market in order to attain return on investment and to promote Dubai's tourism activities and to introduce Dubai to the world. Its strength is that it has the advantage of size and therefore it has the ability to focus on other markets. It is also considering venturing into cargo shipping. Some of its weakness are that it does not cater for a lot of places in the United States, it does not cater for middle class travellers and not all diversifications have been successful. Its opportunities include developing regularly new generations of more superior airline services, focusing on middle class travellers and more innovations. Some of the threats it experiences include; rival companies, rising costs of fuel and other low cost carriers like air arabia. It is recommended that emirates ventures into low segment markets and not only rely on high end markets alone.
Planning in the Emirates Airlines is under the Planning and Research Department. The work done here forms a basis of decision making with regard to airport facilities, serving new markets, investments made in the future on aircraft purchases and product development. Under planning, the following activities takes place; Expansion of the companies long term plans to make sure there is continuous growth as well as profits, overseeing of the airlines progressively growing business of charter flights as well as the unscheduled ones, designing of the company’s short term and long term plans of operation via effective distribution of its increasing fleet, distribution of the company’s flight schedules through industry publications in electronic and print forms, optimization of the network capacity in order to seize opportunities which are short term via aircraft re-assignments and recognition of fleet requirements in terms of number and type of aircraft.
The Emirates Airlines tries as much as possible to use fewer resources, produce little pollution and create less waste, while maintaining high standards of their services and still grow the business. The company has been able to invest in the latest engine and aircraft technology as well as having one of the newest airline fleets. This has resulted in better levels of fuel efficiency, and also the ability to carry more passengers for less fuel and emissions. The latest designs of fleet in the Emirates Airlines have reduced noise levels thereby reducing the level of noise pollution in the atmosphere.
Whenever possible, the pilots always use fuel saving techniques, and work closely with the traffic management to ensure that the planes can fly in the shortest fuel efficient routes while the engineers make sure that the fleet is working at its optimum performance. The Airline has also developed some important initiatives to ensure waste products have been managed properly, water consumption has been monitored and that energy has been used efficiently while recycling where possible. The airline has also supported various environmental projects in various countries and operates through the Greener Tomorrow Program. It contributed directly to biodiversity via two major initiatives; The Emirates Wolgan Valley Resort and Resort and the Dubai Desert Conversation Reserve.
The airline industry is the most competitive and fastest growing in the world. As a result of this, the Emirates Airlines has been able to stay on top of the game by providing the finest services to its customers. The company has also been able to acquire so many aircrafts (Riva, 2013), so as to counter the growing completion from other upcoming companies. It has also been able to build a strong brand name for itself and gained customer loyalty, as well as created an excellent position within the market.
Organization (Abdullah)
Emirates follows a functional organizational structure .In this kind of structure , focus is on job functions. This structure works well for Emirates in that directors are able to assign works to managers below them who then work on them and report back..The organization of the Emirate Airlines is subdivided into various divisions (see appendix A). Each division is headed by a director. Directors report to the chief executive officer. These include: air navigation service provider, safety affairs, security affairs, strategy and international affairs, support services and commercial services. The Airlinesnavigation division covers different services and products for the company such as in-flight catering, charges of air traffic control, on-board amenities and products, and jet fuel. On the ground, it handles services such as cargo handling, chauffeur drive, airport ground handling and airport parking and landing charges (Airlines, 2014).
The strategy and international affairs division deals with obtaining marketing and airline operational requirements which include; Printing services, corporate giveaways and gifts, promotions, sponsorship, exhibition and events services, advertisements, media agency services, market research services and media relations. The support services team has a lot to deal with including commodities associated with the maintenance of various tasks, and the continuous growth of the company. The services and products of this division can be classified as; Hospital contracts, airport lounge supplies, hotel supplies, medical equipment, IATA publications, uniforms laundry services, florist services, uniforms, operational consumables and office equipment. The safety affairs sector looks on the safety needs and mitigations that the airline should put in place. Security affairs looks into the general safety of the airline.
The final division of the organizing sector is the commercial services. This helps in meeting the internal customer expectations of product availabilities. It incorporates coming up with products that meets the needs of customers, looking if new airliners need to be bought and ensuring that the general operations of the airliner goes on as expected (Airlines, 2014).
Controlling (Mohammed)
A commendable job is done by the emirates airlines employees in controlling approximately 1200 flights weekly. Everyday there are unforeseen circumstances such as cancellation of flights, bad weather, and medical emergencies that have to be considered by the staff which deal with about 200 flights that fly in and out of 74 cities every day (Wilson, 2005). Emirates airlines have a state-of-the art control room which ensures that all operations are carried out efficiently and as required. It is also equipped with cutting edge equipment which ensures that the company’s integrity is maintained in case of delays, re-routing, diversions, or even cancellation and to improve quality and speed of recovery decisions.
Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum headed the airline during its establishment period and still is the current chairman. Over the years since its founding, the emirates airline has continued to expand immensely both in its destinations as well as its fleet. This speedy expansion progress growth plans made the airline to relocate its operations to terminal 3 of Dubai’s International Airport in 2008, so as to sustain them.
The Emirates Company makes use of wavetec queue management solutions and has been able to use it to monitor the progress within all their offices all over the world. From the company’s head office in Dubai, they have been able to inspect the service times in all of their branches connected to wavetec globally. This software also has information which is used by the Human Recourse at the main offices to monitor the performance of workers at each branch. The Wavetec system made for the Emirates Airlines has also provided many opportunities to customize solutions according to the customer’s needs. After analyzing the needs of Emirates, wavetec provided them with a solution that comprised of an electronic queue management system as well as fully customized central reporting software. Wavetec currently represents Emirates in over sixty countries all over the world.
Every Emirate station that is powered by wavetec contains an L.C.D touch screen kiosk. This enables customer’s priority calling as well as equipping the Emirate representative with information prior to serving the customer and thus he /she is ready to serve them and this saves time. Wavetec has also assisted Emirates with software which is able to display ticket information as well as diverse promotional messages and adverts on the L.C.D screens. It has also provided Emirates with a manager dashboard which shows live data regarding active counters, active staff, and customers served as well as those not served. This level of control in the Emirates Airlines has been appropriate for the company enabling it to run smoothly and monitor almost all activities in its branches worldwide. It has also enabled the company to run efficiently and provide even better services to its customers thus gaining their loyalty.
Emirates has tried to tighten its finances in bid to remain profitable and control unnecessary spending. It has embarked on establishment of individual profit centres. Each profit centre is the country where emirates has an office. This makes it easier to monitor profits as well as spending of each individual centre. It also expects each individual centre to frequently report on a monthly basis in order to detect problems if any a bit early and arrest them. These reports though are just used internally
Financial highlights 2014-15 2013-14 % change
Revenue and other operating income AED m 94,458 87,766 9.9
Operating profit AED m 6,898 5,123 34.6
Operating margin % 7.2 5.8 14 pts
Profit attributable to the owner AED m 5,461 4,083 33.7
Profit margin % 5.7 4.7 10pts
Financial position
Total assets AED m 120,886 110,100 9.8
Cash assets AED m 20,033 18,995 5.5
The above statistics show that individual profit cebntres have helped boost revenues for emirates.
Leadership
Emirates Airline has become a very successful and competitive company creating a tourism and travel empire at a very high speed in the Middle East. This has however not been achieved miraculously but through the leadership of men who have devoted themselves to work tirelessly to see the company rise to where it is today. Most executives have been in the Emirates Airlines team since its commencement and have continuously proven to be of great importance.
The chairman and chief executive of the Emirates Airlines ,Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum has in the past 25 years been in the forefront of Dubai’s outstanding economic development to spearhead the formulation of the fiscal and economic investment strategies and policies, as well as expansion of the Airline.
Tim Clark serves as the airlines president and has been part of the management team since the time of launching. He has also been instrumental in the transformation of the company into a worldwide giant company. Other leaders and leadership positions include the Executive Vice President Human Resource headed by Abdulaziz Al Ali, the Executive Vice president and Chief Operations Officer which is headed by Adel Ahamad Al Redha. Other leadership positions include The Executive Vice President – chairman’s office, headed by Ali Mubaarak Al Soori, The Executive Vice President DNATA, The Executive Vice President Service Departments among others.
The chairman and Chief Executive Leadership position has been the most relevant and utilized in the organization. This originates from Sheiks transformation of the airline company from being just a regional airline to being the world’s biggest international carrier.
The organization continuously tries to motivate its employees by giving each employee lesser working hours. This gives the employees more time for themselves and is accomplished by working in shifts. The company also rewards successful pilots who have made it through the selection program. This motivates more people to look for jobs in this organization.
Compared to other airline organizations, the Emirates Airline leadership has proven more superior due to the constant awards, big profits and a strong brand name for itself. The leaders have been able to use strong and reliable strategies to ensure that the company has consistently developed in all areas.
Emirates leaders are considered influential and democratic leaders. Leadership is composed of the aptitude and skills as well as influence of the behavior and thinking of the individuals or subordinates. It is considered a process of social influence where an individual can be able to provide the support and assistance for others to achieve a common goal. Emirates Airlines possesses a democratic style of leadership as portrayed by an occasion where the group leaders made a decision to requisite a special board meeting to handle the issue of Flanagan.
The company’s leadership persons, styles and strategies have proven worthwhile and of great importance ever since its birth. The motivational approaches have also proven more than effective making the Emirates Airline company one of the most successful of its kind in the entire world.
Conclusion
Different from other airline companies Emirates has the first class and business lounges in different floors and extend all through the concourse. These lounges are the largest in the world covering approximately 29000 square meters. This lounge is not only made special by its breath taking size but also by what is inside it. It contains special amenities such as a children playing area where kids can go play and have fun, it also has a fine dining area that has table linens, showcase kitchens, entertainment zones, business centers and conference rooms , sitting areas varieties that range from open to cozy, duty free shops and cigar lounges. Accessibility and innovation has made the company different from the others, and it has also made its services and products easily accessible to all people, and maintained high standards of quality.
7.0 Recommendation
It is clear that the Emirates are doing quite well in ensuring that its customers get the best experience and a memorable flight every time they want to travel. It is very important for an airline to know the needs of its customers, understand that time is of great importance and that the customers not only want to reach their destination, but they want to enjoy it too. I would recommend that the airline strives to satisfy the needs of the customers first, by ensuring that they know their clients well. When they understand the needs of the clients, then service delivery will be very quick and efficient, to the liking of the customer. This can be achieved by engaging the clients more, in a friendly, but professional manner. The planning team should increase its community service works in order to promote good will from the people. This way, the airline will be more accepted because the people will be able to associate with it. In the end, it will be the most preferred travel partner. The organizing department of the emirates is laden with a lot of responsibilities. A recommendation would be to ensure that there are a sufficient number of employees, who will help run the department better, with much success. Control is a major task that an airline has. It would be much better if Emirates hired the best people in the field, who are able to work without supervision. Emirates should also consider venturing into economy class customers. It should focus on minimising operating costs like fuel by considering if they can be buying fuel directly from the refiners. On the part of natural calamities, it should invest more on weather predictions and 'mother nature' activities in order to mitigate the risk of flying anb aeroplane when one of them is about to happen. If Emirates is able to cut on these unforeseen costs, it can achieve higher profits and therefore focus on investing activities like buying more aeroplane fleets.
References
Airlines, E. (2014). Company's annual report. Retrieved from http://www.theemiratesgroup.com/english/facts-figures/annual-report.aspx
Airlines, E. (2015). Emirates Airlines | Company Profile from Hoover’s. Hoovers.com. Retrieved 9 June 2015, from http://www.hoovers.com/company-information/cs/company- profile.Emirates_Airlines.28a3ceb09808cf9f.html
Airlines, E. (2015). Emirates Airlines | Company Profile from Hoover’s. Hoovers.com. Retrieved 9 June 2015, from http://www.hoovers.com/company-information/cs/company- profile.Emirates_Airlines.28a3ceb09808cf9f.html
Browne, J. (2013).Case study: Emirates Uses Customer Journey Maps to Keep the Brand on Course. Retrieved from http:/www.nlighten.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/5.pdf
Emirates Identity Authority (2014). Strategic Plan 2014-2016Retrieved from http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=12&cad=rja&uact =8&ved=0CCwQFJABOAo&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.id.gov.ae%Fassets%2Fql375i ED.pdfaspx&ei=de5dVY3NM4GVuAT-5104Bw&usg=AFQjCNGcc- qvBpWKR4u1038BYT0t37SWFw&sig2=_J2AgCEEpagTvZGYivK5yA&bvm=bv.9375 6505,dc2E
Henderson, J.C. (2006). Tourism in Dubai:overcoming barriers to destination development. International Journal of tourism Research, 8(2), 87-99.
Mouawad, J. (2011). Emirates Ambition Worry European Rivals Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/business/13emirates html? _r=0
Nagraj, A, (2013). Special Report: Emirates Airlines Flying High Retrieved from http://gulfbusiness.com/2013/06/special-report-fly-me-to-the-boom/#.VV3suyhMLIU
Riva, A. (2013).Emirates Airlines Is Eating All Other Airlines’ Lunch. But It Here To Stay? Retrieved from http://www.ibtimes.com/emirates-airline-eating-all-other-airlines-lunch- it-here-stay-1472912
Wilson, G. (2005). Emirates: The Airline of the Future. Dubai: Media Prima.
Appendix A. Emirate Airlines Organizational Structure
