Emirates is flying “on empty”. The prestigious carrier is reporting record losses

Ashley Davis25/03/2026

0 51 2 minutes read

2026-03-25 06:00

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2026-03-25 06:00

Tourists and residents leave Dubai in panic and do not return. No wonder – no traveler wants to get stuck in a foreign country that is on Iran's short list to attack. The data from the flagship carrier Emirates is shocking. Giant Airbus A380s that can seat hundreds of people fly almost empty, sometimes carrying fewer passengers than their own crew.

Emirates flies "empty". The prestigious carrier is reporting record losses — photo: kindindubai / / Shutterstock

The unstable situation in the airspace of the United Arab Emirates does not encourage people to go on vacation. Regular openings and closings due to attacks make travelers reluctant to risk getting stuck in the region or ending up in an immediate danger zone.

For European carriers, such as British Airways and LOT, the situation was simple – they suspended connections to the Persian Gulf region. However, airlines in the region are desperately trying to maintain their network. However, this cannot hide the deep image and economic crisis – says “Bloomberg”.

@alishhba.s Never saw a dubai flight this empty literally trusted @Emirates with our lives rn!! #dubai #war #flights #trending #fyp ♬ House featuring John Cale – Charli xcx & John Cale

25 people in an Airbus A380 (it can take 600 tourists)

According to available data, the occupancy rate of flights to Dubai is a repeat of the Covid lockdown. On routes from Central Europe, including: from Prague or Budapest, the planes are only 5-10 percent full. Prestigious connections from Western metropolises look even worse:

on the Paris – Dubai – Airbus A380 route transported only 25 passengers. This number is almost equal to the number of cabin crew and pilots operating this type of machines;
on the New York – Dubai route – the occupancy rarely exceeds 20%, and the record low result is only 35 people on board a wide-body plane capable of carrying 500 people;
on the London – Dubai route – approx. 20 percent occupancy.
And this is emphasizing that around Easter was one of the periods of increased demand for the above travel destinations.

This also means that several thousand passengers a day do not show up for flights – according to an internal memo obtained by Bloomberg. This highlights the complexity of the operation, which typically involves hundreds of almost fully booked flights each day. The carrier offers refunds and flexible rebooking for flights scheduled until the end of the month.

However, in the opposite direction, the airlines are still struggling with the crazy demand for tickets.

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500 flights a day? Now it's barely 70

Before the war, the airline operated around 500 flights from Dubai International Airport on a normal day – around half of which were departures. On March 16, that number dropped to just 71 launches, according to Flightradar24 data.

To save its finances, the carrier transports cargo instead of passengers. It mainly uses Boeing 777 aircraft. The Strait of Hormuz is practically closed, which makes air transport one of the few ways to import supplies.

If the conflict lasts longer, the flag carrier Emirates may be forced to revise its strategy based on gigantic machines, the maintenance of which generates astronomical losses at such low occupancy.