PARIS: Ahmed Bin Saeed Al-Maktoum of the ruling family of Dubai - has grand ambitions, and a bankroll to match.
He has a huge pot of money to spend, $82 billion from his government, the airline and other financiers. He loves large planes and has ordered 55 super-jumbo A380s to create the biggest fleet of these double-decker planes in the world. And he wants to make Dubai, a sheikhdom by the sea, the busiest airline hub in the world, overtaking London, New York and Singapore.
Some may consider Maktoum's goals overreaching, but he has delivered so far on all his promises. He built Emirates Airlines from a two-plane operation, started with $10 million in 1985, into one of the world's largest international carriers, with 105 planes. Emirates is the world's fastest-growing airline - it will take delivery of one new Boeing or Airbus plane a month for the next five years - and Maktoum said he would like to see it become, some day, the world's biggest.
"We've never seen anything like it before," said Robert Cullemore, a consultant at Aviation Economics, a London-based aerospace advisory firm. "We've never seen growth at this rate."
Of course, success for Maktoum is not just a simple matter of buying airplanes. He must still compete with well-established carriers plying many of the same routes as Emirates, attract enough passengers to fill his vast fleet profitably and hope that the economies of the Middle East, including Dubai, and emerging markets in Asia and the Indian subcontinent continue to grow at their current pace to justify the Emirates' massive investment.
But at the recent Paris Air Show, Maktoum seemed unfazed by those concerns. He met with the Louis Gallois, the Airbus chief executive, to sign a deal that added eight more A380s, with a list price of $2.6 billion, to his fleet.
He held a news conference to tout Dubai's plan to spend $82 billion over the next decade on aviation, including building a new $33 billion Dubai World Central International Airport, which is to have six runways and to become the world's largest airport.
"What we are witnessing today," Maktoum said at the time, "is the rewriting of the world's aviation history and the beginning of a new era of global aviation."
Being oil-rich helps. Emirates Airlines, said Howard Rubel, an aerospace analyst with Jefferies and Company, "has got cash, clout and cache."
"What's surprising is the rapid emergence of the Emirates as a player," Rubel added. "The economies of the Middle East are the fastest growing in the world. So what do they do? They buy planes. But five years ago it was like, 'Who are these guys?' "
Aviation has helped transform Dubai, which was a desert trading post with hardly a paved road just 50 years ago, from being fly-over country to a place where people are flying in. About 25.6 million passengers landed there last year.
The plan to develop Dubai was created by Maktoum's late older brother and is now overseen by the current ruler, Maktoum's nephew, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum.
Once a pearl-diving outpost that grew rich with oil revenues in the 1970s and 1980s, modern Dubai seems built on hyperbole.
Oil revenues have been declining as a percentage of Dubai's economy prepares for the day that its reserves dwindle. Today, oil represents only 5 percent of Dubai's economy, which increasingly relies on revenue from superluxurious hotels, a growing financial center and on serving as the regional headquarters for global brands.
For instance, Halliburton, the oil services company, is moving its headquarters from Houston to Dubai, and such American companies as Universal Studios, Nickelodeon, Microsoft and Cisco are also setting up offices.
Dubai is on a $365 billion building spree, and more development means more flights for the carrier. Construction projects include the Burj Dubai, the world's tallest building, and the Mall of Arabia, the world's largest shopping mall.
The 1,500-square-mile, or almost 4000-square-kilometer, emirate is also building "Dubailand" - a leisure park bigger than Monaco - and the Dubai Waterfront, a development of condos and stores that will be the size of Barbados.
At the center of this development spree is the Maktoum family and Maktoum, 49, who exudes a quiet confidence. In an interview at the luxurious Bristol Hotel here, where he was about to host a reception, Maktoum said that "when we started talking about expanding our airline, people thought we were bluffing or that it would take twenty to thirty years." chairman of Emirates Airlines
