Before it became one of the world’s biggest airlines, Emirates started with two borrowed planes and a flight to Karachi.
Every day, hundreds of Emirates flights take off from Dubai for cities across six continents. But the airline’s story began with just one flight, one route and a team that was largely Pakistani.
On October 25, 1985, flight EK600 left Dubai for Karachi. It was the first flight Emirates ever operated, and it carried the airline’s very first flight number. This month marks 41 years since that journey.
Few people flying Emirates today know that Pakistan International Airlines played a central role in getting the airline off the ground. The aircraft, many of the pilots and much of the early know-how came from PIA.
The idea for the airline took shape in 1984, when Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, then the UAE’s Minister of Defence, asked Maurice Flanagan, who was running dnata at the time, to look into starting an airline for Dubai. Flanagan was later given the task of launching it within five months.
Emirates was set up with $10 million in start-up funding and no promise of further government support. It did not have its own aircraft, so it turned to PIA.
PIA provided two planes on wet lease, an Airbus A300 B4 and a Boeing 737, which arrived in Dubai on October 20, 1985. Under a wet lease, the aircraft come with crew and maintenance support. About 100 pilots, flight engineers, aircraft engineers and maintenance staff had arrived two days earlier to start preparing for the launch.
Captain Fazle Ghani Mian, a PIA pilot who had moved to Dubai at the start of that month, was at the controls of EK600. Recalling the day years later, he said the flight “pushed back and took off on time.” He also remembered that some of the new flight caps were a little too big for some of the pilots, which he called “a minor detail,” Emirates said in an account of its first flight.
PIA’s support went beyond aircraft. Captain Mian also trained some of the UAE’s first national pilots for the airline, and they received their commercial licenses from Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority.
Emirates’ Growth From Two Planes to a Global Network
Karachi was the first stop on a network that grew quickly. Within five years, Emirates was flying to 14 destinations. By 1999, it was carrying 4.7 million passengers a year on a fleet of 32 aircraft.
Pakistan has stayed an important market for the airline throughout. Emirates flies to several Pakistani cities, including Karachi, Lahore and Islamabad, connecting the UAE’s large Pakistani community with home.
Four decades on, Emirates operates a fleet of 277 aircraft and flies to 152 cities in 80 countries.
In its most recent financial year, which ended on March 31, 2026, the Emirates Group reported a record profit of AED 24.4 billion before tax, up 7 percent from the previous year. The airline alone posted a profit of AED 22.8 billion and carried 53.2 million passengers.
The airline took delivery of 15 Airbus A350s during the year, bringing its A350 fleet to 19, and it has 367 aircraft on order, including 270 Boeing 777X jets, with deliveries running through 2038. The group’s workforce has grown to nearly 131,000 people.
From two leased aircraft and a single flight to Karachi, Emirates has become one of the most recognized names in global aviation. And every time an Emirates jet lands in Karachi, it is returning to the city where it all began.
