I was watching over the weekend on the BBC TV channel, an interview of Maurice Flanagan, the CEO running the most successful Emirates Airline. I was enthused to hear of Maurice’s abundance mentality and vision of the future. During the interview, he spoke of the fantastic growth that his airline has experienced and the challenge the airline has taken to grow even larger in the coming years with a detailed plan to operate over 150 fuel efficient wide body aircraft. Emirates airline has on order from Airbus 47 A380!

The development of the airline is in the overall strategy of the Dubai foremost family, the Al Maktoun’s vision to develop Dubai past the wealth that can be drawn from pumping “black gold” crude oil from the underground of the gulf area. Dubai today has become a center for many things and a great attraction for tourism, finance and trade.

Maurice grew the airline with the open skies policy of Dubai which today is served by over 110 airlines. I recommend the reading of the write up on the history of success of Emirates under the leadership of Maurice since 1978. He is known in the aviation field as a fierce supporter of open competition.

To the question of the rising competition being planned by the neighboring states of

Abu Dhabi and Qatar airlines, he replied in his interview that the more there will be competing airlines in the region, the greater the traffic in the region will grow. The Gulf area with great airlines he said will become an enormous airline hub for the benefits of the whole area and a cross road to serve east and west. A market place is a location where you have the choices between many operators. The larger the market place: more opportunities open up.Let the cake grow larger and may the smarter of the operators share the largest slice.

From his position as the sales Manager of B.O.A.C in Southern Africa when I first met him years ago, Maurice has surely forged himself a very successful career. I had the chance to meet him again sometime back in the 90’s when with my mate Omar Ramtoola we attempted to secure the general sales agency of Emirates for the Indian Ocean region. He used to be friendly with one of my bosses, the late John Ribet at Rogers Aviation in the early 70’s. We surely have to learn from Maurice’s business acumen.

“Emirates is run on the principle that customers are smart, recognize and reward better service – and are willing to pay for good value-for-money.”