Emirates Group has announced a three percent increase in annual profits for April 2025 to March 2026, with cargo operations and a good first 11 months of the year helping to mitigate the disruption to passenger services caused by the Israel-US war on Iran from the end of February, the carrier said.
The State-owned group reported pre-tax profits of US$6.6 billion ($11.1b), revenue of US$ 41.0 billion, and cash assets of US$16.2 billion, all record figures. The airline remains the world’s most profitable despite what the company described as a “disruptive and challenging” end to the financial year.
Since the Israeli-US attacks on Iran, and Iran’s retaliatory strikes on Gulf neighbours, the United Arab Emirates has suffered 2,800 drone and missile attacks, the Group report noted, describing “military activity” that “massively disrupted global commercial air traffic in the Gulf region.”
For the second year in a row, Emirates is the world’s most profitable airline in the 2025-26 reporting period.
— Emirates (@emirates) May 7, 2026
The airline has reported record-breaking financial results, despite a disruptive and challenging 12th month of its financial year, including:
🏆 Record profit before… pic.twitter.com/H8I62qwMYF
Operations at Dubai International Airport, the world’s busiest hub for international passengers for the last 12 consecutive years, have been severely compromised during the crisis, with airspace closed and planes grounded. Dubai Airports has reported a 66% drop in March passenger traffic year-on-year, and quarterly traffic plummeted 21%.
Nonetheless, Emirates managed to get back to handling up to 58% of its former seat capacity by the end of March 2026. Overall, the airline’s passenger numbers fell by 1% to 53.2 million over the fiscal year. Its most recent data indicates it is now fulfilling 96% of its global network and operating at 75% of its former capacity.
“Although we are still operating at a lower passenger capacity than pre-disruption, cargo operations have ramped up to support the movement of essential goods into and through the UAE,” chairman and chief executive Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum said. In addition, he highlighted that those difficulties were in part offset by a “first 11 months of 2025-26” during which “the picture across the group was very positive.”
That meant the group was able to pay out a dividend of US$1b to the Investment Corporation of Dubai. Looking ahead amid ongoing concerns about jet fuel shortages and high prices, Al Maktoum said Emirates fuel costs were “well-hedged” for the next three years, thanks to work the Group has done with suppliers “to secure the volumes required to support our current operations and our scaling-up to pre-disruption levels.”
Still, the regional instability has created the biggest crisis for Emirates and other airlines since COVID-19. While Europe’s biggest airline, Ryanair, also says its fuel hedging strategy is intact, carriers from Lufthansa to AirAsia have had to cancel flights and reroute their operations. AirAsia’s co-founder, Tony Fernandes, has described the situation as worse for the aviation sector than the pandemic.
Meanwhile, the EU Commissioner for Sustainable Transport and Tourism has insisted that airlines cancelling flights due to the crisis must continue to honour established passenger rights.
