Bloomberg Businessweek - USA (2019-12-23)

◼ BUSINESS Bloomberg Businessweek December 23, 2019

18

COURTESY DUBAI AIRPORTS

● OneofEmirates’mostlucrativeroutes

is thehopfromDubaitoRiyadh

Short Flight,

THEBOTTOMLINE Boeing’seffortstoturnpilottraininginto a

profitable business may have hindered staff cooperation that could

have detected the 737 Max’s design flaws before it entered service.

Over 35 years, Emirates has built itself into the

world’s largest airline, its Airbus double-deckers and

Boeing 777s raining down on Dubai around the clock

from every corner of the world and helping turn the

desert outpost into a vibrant metropolis. But one of

its most profitable routes is a two-hour hop to neigh-

boring Saudi Arabia.

Each Sunday morning, the departure hall in

Concourse B at Dubai International Airport comes

alive with the buzz of business travelers kitted out

with dark suits, compact suitcases, and white wire-

less earbuds. Long lines form at the start of every

week for EK 819, the most popular of four daily

Emirates flights that pack in a total of about 1,

seats. The destination is Riyadh, and the cargo is

business consultants who live in Dubai on week-

ends but work for the Saudi government during the

week in sectors ranging from education to trans-

port to energy.

First- and business-class seats sell out months

in advance. A round-trip economy ticket shoots up

to 4,000 dirhams ($1,089) on average during the

narrow commuting window and exceeds 5,000 dir-

hams for a last-minute booking, making it costlier

than a round-trip ticket to London. The fare then

falls to 1,500 dirhams after the morning rush and

into the week. Come Thursday night, Dubai beck-

ons, and the procession of passengers winds its way

back to the city, with the price skyrocketing again.

Frequent flyers have perfected their weekly rou-

tine. To save time on arrival, few check their lug-

gage. Many choose to travel lightly by storing their

workweek outfits at their hotels in the Saudi capital.

While Emirates is known for its huge global foot-

print, nearby Riyadh ranks as one of its top regional

routes in terms of frequency, with 27 weekly flights

from Dubai. Saudi Arabia contributes up to 60%

of the revenue Emirates generates in the Middle

East, according to the state-owned company. It

began deploying the A380—a giant plane that typ-

ically seats almost 600 passengers on two decks—

five times a week on that route this year.

“Any airline that is looking to run a hub the way

Emirates does will naturally get drawn to Saudi

Arabia to get a lot of traffic,” says John Strickland,

Bhavye Suneja typified the new generation of

pilots across Asia. At 31, he’d amassed 6,000 hours

of flying time, mostly on the 737. He didn’t know

that one of the tiny vanes that measures the angle

of the plane’s nose was broken and would set off a

terrifying fight for control of the plane. On a previ-

ous flight of the same aircraft, a pilot in the jump

seat had suggested flipping two switches to cut

power to the stabilizer pushing the nose down

but had left no mention of it in their logbooks.

So Suneja lacked a crucial piece of information

that might have avoided tragedy. As a result, hor-

rified crewmen watched from an oil platform as

the almost brand-new $120 million plane plunged

into the Java Sea, killing all 189 aboard.

Days later, Boeing issued a checklist remind-

ing pilots they can flip the switches to disable the

stabilizer. It also began work on a software update

to keep a broken vane from triggering the system.

In March, Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 took off

from Addis Ababa and dropped out of the sky six

minutes later. Captain Yared Getachew, 29, and his

co-pilot quickly recognized that the rogue software

behind the Lion Air crash had kicked in. They hit

the cutout switches, but amid the confusion left the

jet’s engines gunning at full takeoff throttle, mak-

ing it difficult to control. They flipped the switches

back on, and the plane dove. An additional 157 peo-

pleweredead.“Wecryeveryday,”saysMichael

Stumo,fatherofSamyaStumo,24,oneof the

victims. �Peter Robison and Julie Johnsson

Big Profit

◀ Dubai's airport

has become a hub

for consultants

who shuttle to Saudi

for the workweek