There are many airlines that operate successfully around the world, but few are such a prominent part of popular culture as the Emirates flight group. The company was founded in the United Arab Emirates in Dubai, and is officially the largest airline that operates in the Middle East. The airline is based primarily in the Dubai International Airport from which it operates over two thousand, four hundred flights every week.

Emirates offers flight services to one hundred and sixteen cities in sixty eight different countries around the world. The airline provides flights to the rest of Asia, as well as Africa, North America, South America, Oceania and Europe. The airline is therefore one of only a handful of companies in the world that provides transport to every inhabited continent in the world. The airline is also notable for operating three out of the ten longest commercial flights that are non-stop in the world. These services run from Dubai to the American locations of San Fransisco, Houston and Los Angeles.

As the name suggests, the airline is part of the Emirates Group which provides jobs for more than fifty thousand employees worldwide. The Group is owned entirely by the Dubai government and is under the direct control of the Investment Corporation of Dubai. The airline is involved with the Group’s cargo division, SkyCargo, and as such, it undertakes much of the cargo transport undertaken by that sector of the enterprise.

Dubai was previously served by the company Gulf Air until it began to limit transport to the country during the mid 1980s. consequently, in the first quarter of 1985, Emirates was conceived and given formal backing from no less than the royal family of Dubai. The Dubai Royal Air Wing was the provider of the first two aircraft that were owned by the airline. This donation was given under the stipulation that the company was required to be operated and managed without the aid of subsidiaries by the government, with the exclusion of the ten million dollar start-up loan.
Over the years that followed the companies initial founding, the airline came under the control of its head; Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum who is still the company’s chairman as of 2012. The airline went on to expand its fleet, its flight routes and its destinations. Consequently, the airline is now considered to be one of the key figures of the aeronautical travel industry to this day.