Nabil Sultan, Emirates' executive vice president of passenger sales and country management, was in New York last month for the U.S. Open, which Emirates has sponsored for the past 14 years. During the tournament, news editor Johanna Jainchill spoke with Sultan about Emirates' fleet retrofit and trends in U.S. travel.
Nabil Sultan
Q: Emirates in 2022 launched a $2 billion fleet retrofit program of more than 120 aircraft. That's now doubled.
A: We embarked on a major program to retrofit the entire fleet, about 220 widebody aircraft, investing almost $5 billion into those aircraft. The ethos behind this is we have a superior product, and we have some aircraft that are getting a bit older. So how do you ensure that the retrofit gets the entire aircraft and makes it brand new? That's the objective: that you walk into an aircraft, it looks brand new. That's absolutely important from a brand perspective. This is the largest project Emirates has every undertaken and the largest in the industry. I haven't seen any airline after Covid invest $5 billion into a retrofit.
Q: How far along is it?
A: By the end of this year we'll probably complete almost 40%, and the rest should happen next year. Of the 12 destinations we operate in in the U.S., 10 have retrofitted aircraft where we introduced Premium Economy cabins with extra legroom: a 40-inch pitch, upgraded and elevated entertainment -- it's as good as a lot of other [airlines'] business class. From a network perspective, we're operating close to about 78% seat factor on premium economy; there is real demand. We also upgraded the business class, going from 2-3-2 to 1-2-1, so you can imagine the space as we've reduced the number of seats. It gives a lot more comfort to the passenger and elevates the entire experience.
Q: How has your United partnership gone?
A: We work really well together, and we've gotten much closer in terms of cooperation and codeshare. We try to feed a lot of their domestic sector within the U.S. and maybe to Latin America. They take their passengers to Dubai, and we take them beyond Dubai. It's a great cooperation, and I think there's synergy between us in terms of complementing each other and operating through different hubs in the U.S. and in Dubai.
Q: What trends are you seeing in the U.S. market?
A: It continues to be quite strong in terms of demand. After Covid, demand really picked up, and it's continued. There are many factors. The entire industry is operating with constrained capacity. If you think about it, Boeing still hasn't delivered aircraft. New York continues to be the star for us. We have the largest number of flights into JFK and Newark, and both stand out in terms of capacity and extremely strong demand on those flights. West Coast also continues to do well. The fact that we have such a vast network, it really works as a great complement to Americans wanting to travel, whether to Africa or Southeast Asia. And people are happy with the service.
Q: Are you seeing a dip in inbound travel to the U.S.?
A: The only destination where we have seen some impact is between the U.S. and India, for various reasons: visa restrictions for students, uncertainty about high-tech workers. You have almost 350,000 students that fly every year between the U.S. and India alone. We've seen slowdown on those but pickup from a lot of other destinations to the U.S. The Middle East continues to do very well. Africa continues to do very well, especially South Africa, where we've seen good pickup in demand. We continue to see alternative markets stepping in to displace some of the dependency that we've had on some of those other routes.