Emirates boss Clark wins coveted Airline Business award

Tim Clark, president of Emirates Airline, was presented with a top airline strategy award at a ceremony in London last night.

Clark was credited as the architect behind the Emirates strategy to develop Dubai into the world’s premier international mega-hub, and was described as having been evangelical in his "conviction to accumulate
an Airbus A380 fleet of eye-watering proportions,to deliver the necessary network connections
and capacity."

He was presented with the Airline Business award. Previous winners include Steven Udvar-Hazy, of Air Lease; Pedro Heilbron, of Copa Airlines; Herb Kelleher, Southwest Airlines and Dr Assad Kotaite, from ICAO.

Emirates becomes the only airline to have ever had two of its people recognised in these awards as Maurice Flanagan was also a winner in 2004.

The awards are run by the Airline Business magazine.

Presenting the awards, AB editor Max Kingsley-Jones said a decade ago, when the first Airline Strategy Awards took place, Emirates was operating just 40 aircraft and carrying seven million passengers. That fleet now numbers more than 150, and by its last financial year, to 31 March, passenger numbers had ballooned to
a whopping 31.4 million.