The travel division’s contribution was up 3% year-on-year, with net sales remaining the same at $1.5 billion.

Dnata said this was a good performance “in the face of increased competition and a challenging landscape”. The period saw the launch of the Yalago bedbank and entry into the Australia cruise market.

It added: “Dnata’s travel division continues to build a strong management team with key personnel changes geared to lead the business and extract synergies across its extensive portfolio of travel brands.”

As a whole, dnata, which also has a flight handling and aircraft catering division, contributed $1.7 billion to Emirates Group revenue, up 7%, with profits up 20% to $180 million, a profit margin of 10.4%.

In the six months to the end of September, the first half of the financial year, Emirates Group made a profit of $631 million, up 77% year-on-year. Revenue, at $13.5 billion, was up 6%.

Within this total, the Emirates airline grew profits by 111%, from $214 million to $452 million on turnover of $12.1 billion. It increased its profit margin from 1.9% to 3.7% and load factors rose almost two percentage points to 77.2%.

Emirates now operates 264 aircraft, five more than at the same time last year.
Routes to Zagreb and Phnom Penh were launched and 10 new aircraft delivered, with five older aircraft retired from the fleet.

Emirates Airline and group chairman and chief executive Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum said: “Our margins continue to face strong downward pressure from increased competition, oil prices have risen, and we still face weak economic and uncertain political realities in many parts of the world.”

He added: “The easing of the strong US dollar against other major currencies helped our profitability. We are also seeing the benefit from various initiatives across the company to enhance our capability and efficiency with new technologies and new ways of working. Moving forward, we will continue to keep a careful eye on costs while investing to grow our business and provide our customers with world-class products and services.”