Theres been some criticism levied at the European government. Do you think regional & international airlines deserve state money to help them avoid bankruptcy and get through this crisis?
A. I think we’ve always been criticised that the Gulf states own airlines or even that Emirates AirlineEmirates Airline has been subsidized by the government, but we proved over the years that we are not a government-subsidized airline and that actually we do pay dividends to the government, our shareholder. It’s always up to those governments in how they want to support their carriers in the end of the day. I think what has happened, and what I’ll be able to talk on EmiratesEmirates’ behalf on what we did for a lot of people, we really paid for that period of time. When they were stranded here and they were an EmiratesEmirates passenger, we did very well. I must really thank my team at EmiratesEmirates, who initiated our crisis centre operation here for a lot of people. Even though operations had stopped for a lot of Europe, there were a lot of people here from the EmiratesEmirates management, who were working 24-7 during that period of time and a lot of people wouldn’t know about it.
