Dubai Airport Expansion

Very informative stuff about the Dubai Airport Expansion can be found here and here (pdf).

(via nzm)

More great photos of Dubai

In addition to the aerial shots referenced in the last post, don’t forget to check out the other categories over at pbbase.com, too. Some very nice shots to be found there!

Dubai from the sky

Gulf news has a new installment of their photo series “Dubai from the sky”. This time, Palm Jumeirah is featured. Also check out the other installments, some of the photos are pretty good:

• Dubai Marina
• Internet and Media City
• Springs, Meadows and Arabian Ranches
• Shaikh Zayed Road
• Palm Jebel Ali and The World

(via nzm)

Update: more and very stunning aerial shots of Dubai are here (thanks to DXBluey, who suggested this site over at the UAE community blog).

Dubai Metro Updates

The Dubai metro is getting another line: The purple line will connect Dubai International Airport with yet to build Dubai World Central International Airport. But this connection will also be provided by the blue line that was announced some time before. The difference is: the purple line will establish an express connection between the two airports, while the blue line will have more stops in business and residental districts and consequently takes longer for the distance.

In other Dubai Metro related news, Gulf News and Dubai Metro are handing out water and chocolate in order to make the public aware of the new metro system. Over at secret dubai diary, this gets not much understanding - the metro is more than three years away, afterall. But read the comments of the Metromania article and it makes much more sense: Dubai people are unlikely to step out of their cars, unless they are literally kicked out. So, it might indeed be a good idea to start now…

Emirates will be World’s Biggest Airline

Note: I have submitted a copy of this post to the UAE community blog.

Last month, German Wirtschaftswoche featured a very good analysis
about the prospects of Emirates Airline. For all non-German-speaking readers, I’ve picked the highlights for you:

Gary Chapman, director of finances and human resources at Emirates Group:

“We will grow both our total revenue and the number of our passengers at 20 percent annually for the next 10 years.”

Let’s do the math: (1.2)^10 = 6.19: By 2016, Emirates will be more than six times as big as it is now - provided Chapman is right, of course. But, you may ask, how big is Emirates now? Because, well, six times nothing is still nothing, right? Not so fast: With total revenues at 6.3 billion US-dollars, Emirates already ranks 19th worldwide. Compared to 26 billion dollars of Air France-KLM, currently the world’s biggest airline (in terms of total revenues), this doesn’t look bad at all. Especially when you consider that Emirates grows at a much faster rate than the biggies - while beeing much more profitable, too. The article quotes analysts from Swiss-based bank USB:

in 2010 Emirates will be the biggest long-distance airline in the world and in 2015 the biggest airline overall.

More interesting stuff from the article:

• Emirates won’t go public any time soon. It’s CEO, Tim Clark, proudly declares that their cash reserves are so high that they could even fly for half a year without charging a single passenger.
• The airline won’t join a flight alliance like Star Alliance - because they think this would hinder their growth.
• Over the next five years, Emirates will invest more than 500 million euros in sports sponsoring.
• Within ten years, Emirates will connect its homebase Dubai with every major city in the world.
• Unlike its competitors, Emirates only uses big airlines, which translates into better comfort.
• Their cost-structure is similar to low-cost airlines: flat hierarchies, relatively low salaries (at least when compared to their European and American competitors).
• Last, but not least, they are located in Dubai, which means low or non-existent taxes and cheap kerosene.

All in all: Tough times are coming for Emirates’ competitors! And golden times for Dubai: Some of the passengers that are routed through the city by Emirates will always stay in the City, contributing to it’s meteoric rise. By the way: Dubai is currently constructing the biggest airport in the world.