Emirates Says Russians Also Have Right to Travel Despite Ukraine

Emirates President Tim Clark said the Russian people have every right to continue traveling regardless of sanctions on the economy, defending the Gulf carrier’s maintenance of regular services despite the invasion of Ukraine.

Emirates will carry on operating to Russia for as long as it is told to do so by its owner, the government of Dubai, Clark told Bloomberg Television in an interview on Tuesday. The airline currently serves Moscow twice daily and St. Petersburg once a day, linking the cities with its vast global network via a stop in the Gulf state.

“These sanctions are not aimed at the Russian people,” Clark said. “The Russian people are just as affected by what’s been going on in Ukraine as everyone else, I suspect.”

Passenger loads on the flights are “fairly healthy,” the executive said, including customers traveling for humanitarian reasons, staff from non-profits, diplomats and some tourists. Cargo space is in very high demand, he said.

With Russian airlines and many foreign carriers subject to reciprocal airspace bans and other curbs that have greatly curtailed flights, Emirates provides one of the few remaining major arteries linking the country with the rest of the world. Clarke said his airline is also free to overfly Russia, and does so on routes to the U.S. west coast.

Emirates is currently profitable and cash positive and is “managing quite well” with the surge in jet-fuel expenses, primarily by increasing fares, Clark said.

“We were facing higher oil prices prior to the conflict and we are dealing with those,” he said. “Unfortunately that means that prices have to rise to cover the fuel-cost increases.”

Clark said that demand is continuing to recover from the coronavirus pandemic. China’s continuing curbs on foreign travel remain and issue, he said, but markets including Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia are all improving.