On May 24, 2021, Emirates CEO Sir Tim Clark reportedly said that he had doubts with regards to the Boeing 777X aircraft delivery program. Emirates may get the Boeing 777X aircraft delivery only after 2024.
In the pre-recorded interview with aviation consultant John Strictland seen by Reuters, Clark revealed he had doubts the airline’s first Boeing 777X aircraft would come before 2024.
“They have said the back end of 2023. Well, we always read that for 2024. I have been in the business too long when I hear manufacturers say things like that. They can’t give you a figure, they can’t give you a date for a tail number, then you know you are shifting to the right, very often up to 18 months,” Clark said.
Emirates was initially supposed to start taking the first Boeing 777X aircraft deliveries in 2020. However, that timeline was initially pushed back to 2022 and later to 2023. However, now Clark revealed it was unlikely the Emirates was going to get the aircraft before 2024.
Currently, Emirates has a total of 264 aircraft in its fleet, as per planespotters.net data. The largest part of the airline’s fleet consists of the Boeing 777 aircraft family: 124 Boeing 777-300ERs, 11 Boeing 777Fs, and 10 Boeing 777-200s. Adding to that, Emirates has quite a hefty fleet of Airbus A380s totaling 118.