UPDATE

“Having received requests from governments and customers to support the repatriation of travellers, Emirates will continue to operate passenger and cargo flights to the following countries and territories until further notice, as long as borders remain open, and there is demand: the UK, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Australia, South Africa, USA, and Canada. The situation remains dynamic, and travellers can check flight status on emirates.com.”

Emirates has just been announced that it will discontinue all flights, from Wednesday 25th March 2020, until further notice.

Emirates discontinues all flights

As of March 25, 2020, Emirates will no longer operate passenger flights worldwide. Only cargo flights will take place. How long this situation will last was not communicated. It simply means that flights will resume as soon as circumstances allow.

Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, CEO of Emirates explained the decision as follows:

“The world has literally gone into quarantine due to the COVID-19 outbreak. This is an unprecedented crisis situation in terms of breadth and scale: geographically, as well as from a health, social, and economic standpoint. Until January 2020, the Emirates Group was doing well against our current financial year targets. But COVID-19 has brought all that to a sudden and painful halt over the past 6 weeks.

As a global network airline, we find ourselves in a situation where we cannot viably operate passenger services until countries re-open their borders, and travel confidence returns. By Wednesday 25 March, although we will still operate cargo flights which remain busy, Emirates will have temporarily suspended all its passenger operations. We continue to watch the situation closely, and as soon as things allow, we will reinstate our services.

Emirates Group has a strong balance sheet, and substantial cash liquidity, and we can, and will, with appropriate and timely action, survive through a prolonged period of reduced flight schedules, so that we are adequately prepared for the return to normality. ”

Employees are not fired

Emirates employees will receive a reduced basic salary. This reduction is planned for three months and varies between 25% and 50%. Junior employees are excluded from the salary reduction.

“Rather than ask employees to leave the business, we chose to implement a temporary basic salary cut as we want to protect our workforce and keep our talented and skilled people, as much as possible. We want to avoid cutting jobs. When demand picks up again, we also want to be able to quickly ramp up and resume services for our customers. “

The following measures are being introduced:

• Discretionary expenses are postponed or completely cancelled
• Recruitment and consultancy work is suspended
• Working with suppliers to save costs
• Employees are encouraged to take paid or unpaid leave
• Payment of a basic salary for the employees
• Presidents of Emirates and dnata – Sir Tim Clark and Gary Chapman – will take a 100% basic salary cut for three months

Cover picture: (c) Emirates