AirwaysMag is reporting that Emirates and Flydubai are likely to merge in the next 18 months. This comes from Aviation Voice reporting that Tim Clark, President of Emirates, saying that if the deal is not yet already finalized it is imminent. The article continues to describe how this would be beneficial to emirates, as it allows the company to serve airports that would not be capable of handling it’s mainline routes.
This news was broken nearly a week ago so it surprised me that this was not on the community. This is a major development for the Big M3 (Big 3 Middle Eastern Airlines) as Emirates is the largest of the three and will solidify its position as the top dog in the Middle East. The article also suggests that with such a development it would not be surprising to see Emirates order 737-Max10 for Flydubai and 787-8 for the mainline Emirates group. I would say it is highly unlikely that Emirates will merge the brand with theirs, but would opt to keep them as a low cost subsidy thus not to have the two products conflict with each other, as Emirates is more focused on a more luxurious flight than Flydubai. In addition, with the city of Dubai changing from a oil business city to a tourist city the change is needed as this allows Emirates to cater to the low cost tourism industry that would allow them to make up for any potential future dips in the oil market as was seen in 2014-2015.
UPDATE 7/17/17
Emirates has officially announced that they have partnered with Flydubai and have a code share agreement. Unlike previous reports the airlines with be managed separately but now they are sharing revenue one both FlyDubai routes and Emirates routes.
Emirates needs a bigger fleet, they don’t have any short haul aircraft, that is one of the things I like about them, but I would like to see what they do with the MAYBE new Aircraft coming in
I have heard about that but if that happens I think that flyDubai planes will need to be intensely retrofitted to have the comfort standards EK planes have. But in the end I think it will be better for the customers because Emirates can serve other airports that do not have a demand for the 777 and also better connections for the passangers.
I think that with this merger EK will be beneficent of thi change since with the max they can do Long and Skinny routes, like Urumqui or Vladivostok. that dont have enough demand to take 330s and 777s
I think it’s a good synergy to merge both companies. Etihad and Qatar have narrowbodies while Emirates don’t. If they can use FD’s 737s, then they can reach destinations with small airports and small demands
So the system would be like between SIA and SLK, SLK serves as the feeder from smaller airports or routes with less demands. While SIA serves the heavy routes. Despite there is a different product consistency between SLK and SIA as SLK also serves leisure market (Like FD in this case), but this synergy has been prooven to be good for both airlines
i.e, I’m going to take a flight to Kathmandu with SIA. SIA doesn’t serve Kathmandu unlike Malaysia Airlines or Thai Airways. But, SLK do. So I’ll use SIA on CGK-SIN segment, and use SLK on SIN-KTM
I think merging both companies into one umbrella is better so I agree. As it would he hard to fully merge these two airlines. Recently, SIA and SLK are also rumoured to be merged into one airline (SIA) too