Seattle: Emirates may revive its hedging programme to help guard against soaring fuel costs, which forced it to pay an additional $1 billion in its half year results alone, its chairman said.
Shaikh Ahmad Bin Saeed Al Maktoum, President of Dubai Civil Aviation and Chairman and CEO of Emirates airline and Group, said in an interview that 2011 earnings for the fast-growing carrier, whose fiscal year ends March 31, may be hit by fuel expenses.
"Sometimes we have to accept that higher fuel prices is less profit," Shaikh Ahmad said when asked about earnings expectations for 2011.
Fuel typically accounts for a third of an airline's operating costs. Emirates said fuel costs took up 41 per cent of total operating costs in its half-year results for the year ending March 31, 2012, up from 33 per cent a year before. "We used to have a [hedging] programme," he told Reuters. "We are looking at a programme to see what exactly we should be doing, but we didn't take a decision yet about how we are going to go about it."
