Emirates, the largest airline in the Middle East, is pushing to expand its routes to Europe, Asia and Africa, while coping with delays in new aircraft deliveries from Boeing and Airbus.

In an interview with The Circuit, Adnan Kazim, Emirates’ Chief Commercial Officer and Deputy President, said the UAE flag carrier is also focused on increasing its use of reduced-carbon Sustainable Airline Fuel (SAF), though supplies remain low.

“While SAF remains a priority for us, it is currently too expensive, costing two to three times more than conventional jet fuel,” Kazim said during the interview last week on the sidelines of the World Governments Summit in Dubai. “However, we are committed to being part of the solution and will adopt SAF wherever it becomes commercially viable.”

Kazim, a 33-year veteran of the Dubai-based airline, has served in posts across the Middle East and Africa, including in Iran. Working beside Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, the airline’s Chairman and CEO, and Emirates President Tim Clark, Kazem has led fleet planning, market expansion, governmental relations and a range of other tasks at the carrier.

The interview was edited for length and clarity.

The Circuit: What are some of the challenges you face as Emirates plans for future growth and new destinations?

Adnan Kazim: There is a lot of volatility in the global market, including currency devaluations and fluctuating fuel prices, but we are managing these challenges effectively. When entering new markets, our decisions are based on demand, stability, and the value these destinations bring to our network and to Dubai.

A key part of our strategy is connecting people to Dubai. Major events hosted in the city, such as those involving 150 participating countries, align with our role in bringing travelers from across our network. Dubai’s tourism sector is thriving, with 18.7 million tourists recently reported, reflecting the success of the city’s strategy and our contribution to it.

Sustainable fuel is becoming a more significant focus in aviation. How is this affecting Emirates commercially?

Sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) is a core part of our strategy. We have committed $200 million to research and development in sustainability. However, SAF is not yet a commercially viable option due to its limited availability. Currently, only a few airports, such as Singapore, Amsterdam, Norway, and London Heathrow, supply SAF and in very small quantities. The challenge lies in the lack of refineries producing SAF at scale, making it difficult to integrate it into our operations.

While SAF remains a priority for us, it is currently too expensive, costing two to three times more than conventional jet fuel. However, we are committed to being part of the solution and will adopt SAF wherever it becomes commercially viable.

What can the industry do to address the cost of SAF and implement more sustainable practices?

A: Right now, the high cost of SAF is largely due to its scarcity and the limited number of refineries producing it. In the future, as production scales up and availability increases, we expect prices to stabilize. However, this requires collaboration between governments, academic institutions, and oil companies to build the necessary infrastructure and supply chains. It’s not just an airline issue—it requires a collective effort to create a sustainable future for aviation.

How is Emirates managing its expansion plans?

Our expansion strategy includes not only new routes but also increased frequencies on existing routes. We are particularly focused on growing our presence in Asia, Europe, and Africa as part of our financial year plans starting from April 1.

In 2024, we expanded into several new destinations, including Bogotá (via Miami), Adelaide (our fifth destination in Australia), Edinburgh in the UK, and Nampink (via Singapore). We also resumed flights to Lagos, Nigeria, and increased frequencies to 15 additional destinations. This growth trajectory will continue, with more destinations and frequencies to be announced in due course.

The UAE signed a free-trade agreement with Ukraine amidst a joint U.S.-Saudi effort to bring Russia’s three-year war in the country to a close.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed witnessed the signing of the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement on Monday at the Qasr Al Shati palace in Abu Dhabi.

Under the terms of the pact, 99% of Ukrainian imports from the UAE and 97% of Ukrainian exports to the UAE will be exempt from customs duties.

The CEPA is aimed at accelerating Ukraine’s economic recovery from the war while creating new opportunities for trade with the UAE in fields including aviation, information technology, infrastructure and heavy industry.

Alain Ducasse leads an all-star line-up of international chefs showing off their signature dishes this week at Dubai’s Gulfood fair, the savory event’s 30th annual edition.

Joining Ducasse – whose restaurants have amassed 21 Michelin stars – are some 50 top chefs including Romain Meder of France, Slovenia’s Ana Roš, Spain’s Ángel León and Swedish-born New Yorker Fredrik Berselius. 

Amid the pop-up kitchens scattered through the vast Dubai World Trade Centre are 5,500 exhibitors from 129 countries showing off more than 1 million products, according to the organizers who promise “invaluable market foresight into the futuristic era of global food commerce.”

The popular exhibition draws tens of thousands of foodies from the UAE and around the world, who can sign up for tours focused on a range of themes including gourmet, alternative proteins and plant-based foods, digitalization & traceability and Made in the Emirates.

Many of the food manufacturers and kitchen appliance companies will exhibit in national pavilions from the U.S., France, Brazil, the U.K., India, Singapore, Japan and Australia. First-time exhibitors are in Dubai from Kosovo, Madagascar, Mauritius and Zambia. Also featured will be a wide array of halal-certified companies, as well as several producing kosher food.

Among the largest companies exhibiting at Gulfood are the Brazilian Beef Exporters Association, Japan Meat & Livestock, the UAE’s Al Ain Farms, Kuwaiti-owned Americana, Dilmah Ceylon Tea, Savenica Fromage & Dairy, Seara Food Europe Holding, TATA International Ltd. and the U.S. Meat Export Federation.

Saudi Arabia’s $500 billion NEOM mega-project is getting off the ground.

Speaking at the Public Investment Fund’s Private Sector Forum in Riyadh, NEOM Chief Development Officer Denis Hickey said on Friday that the first phase of its 170 kilometer-long city, The Line, will be built at the Hidden Marina site on the kingdom’s Red Sea coast.

The first segment of the project will stretch 2.5 kilometers in length and rise 500 meters high.

It is expected to accommodate over 200,000 residents in 80,000 residential units, with 9,000 hotel rooms, as well as commercial and retail spaces, fire stations, schools, police and security services.

Saudi Arabia’s Northern Borders region is emerging as a key driver of economic growth and investment with its $1.2 trillion in mineral resources.

Its phosphate, coal, dolomite, limestone and silica sand deposits have made Saudi Arabia a leading mineral exporter.

The kingdom boasts five phosphate ore sites and has granted 29 active mining licenses, according to government statistics.

Mining and mineral exports have become a central part of Saudi Arabia’s shift from dependence on oil, which aligns with the government’s goal of diversifying the economy and deriving revenue from non-petroleum sources.

As this week’s World Governments Summit was wrapping up in Dubai, Khalfan Belhoul’s head was buzzing with all things AI.

Having hosted TIME Magazine’s TIME100 AI Impact Awards Gala at the Museum of the Future on Monday night, Belhoul, CEO of the Dubai Future Foundation, followed it up on Tuesday by signing a partnership pact with IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna to bolster the use of artificial intelligence tools in the wealthy Gulf financial center.

IBM will also co-publish so-called white papers with the Dubai Future Foundation in April to coincide with the inaugural Dubai AI Week. Belhoul promised more “very interesting announcements” in the coming days that will be “an example for the world.”

As head of a foundation that runs a $300 million venture capital fund and built the city’s iconic Museum of the Future – a massive seven-story elliptical loop with a silvery translucent skin covered in Arabic calligraphy – Belhoul has a challenging mission.

Appointed eight years ago by Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, the Ruler of Dubai and Vice President of the UAE, Belhoul was tasked to “imagine, inspire and design Dubai’s future.” To that end, the Boston University graduate with a master’s degree in e-commerce, assembled a team of scientists, researchers and startup investors to plot Dubai’s long-term roadmap.

“If we think that we will get it right every single time, then we will still not be a leading city of the future,” Belhoul told The Circuit. “Our platform has been built for us to pivot and to make mistakes.”

The interview was edited for length and clarity.

Why does Dubai need a special foundation to chart its future?

When the Dubai Future Foundation was set up – I’ll be very frank with you – we had no clue how to set it up. The idea was that we needed to institutionalize future foresight. Fast forward now, around eight to nine years since the formation, we have a foresight team, we have a think tank, and we have an execution team. I think this shows you the balance between staying up to speed when it comes to what’s happening in the future and of course, you know most of the trends – and the hope and the fear at the same time. Whether it’s climate, AI, mobility, you name it. But then, how can you take all that and create a platform that is for the betterment of humanity? This is what we do.

Critics say you’re a dreamer and that many of the DFF’s ideas are unlikely to ever be put into practice. Are they right?

if you look at our projects, you would see that many of them have seen light and become an example for the world. And what I would really say to those people is that if we think this way, we will never be a leading city of the future. If we think that we will get it right every single time, then we will still not be a leading city of the future. Our platform has been built for us to pivot and to make mistakes.

If you look at investors in venture capital and their portfolio of investments in technology, 80 percent of their portfolio goes bust. But it’s that one story that creates history for them that recovers the whole portfolio. So you can see us working in the same way, where we create a safe environment to test and fail – as long as no one gets hurt or injured or nothing serious happens. Then, we double down on the winning bets and set an example for the world.

Look ahead. How will the DFF look 20 years from now?

Very futuristic. Constantly evolving. Our entity should grow in importance – not because I’m part of it, but because having an entity that becomes a think tank for Dubai and for the UAE to share a view on where the future is evolving is always a need because the future will continue to evolve.

And the interesting – I wouldn’t say scary – part is that this evolution is happening at a much faster pace. If you look at the industrial revolutions and the change from one to the other, you realize that the gap between one revolution to the next is shrinking. You see that our phones are advancing dramatically year after year. Let alone the evolution of AI, quantum computing, and robotics. So you can only imagine where we’re heading.

Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh and other parts of the region are both friendly neighbors and well-financed rivals. How do you address the competition?

One word: Synergy. Second word: Complementing each other. I think Dubai and the UAE – our population is not big enough for a company to scale. Neither is any other Arab country in the world. It’s the whole region that should benefit from this growth. Nowadays, when you set up a business on your phone, with one click of a button, the world becomes your market. So, how do you really connect that world together? Connect the Arab world to ensure that those businesses can scale in a seamless way. And that’s the vision – collaboration, inclusivity, unity – working with one another and creating a bigger impact.

Offering the UAE an earth-boring contract potentially costing billions and a peek into his budget-slashing activities at the White House, Elon Musk headlined today’s final sessions at the World Governments Summit in Dubai.

Musk, the world’s wealthiest person, appeared on giant screens before the conference’s 6,000 participants, looking like Big Brother with the words, “Tech Support” emblazoned on his black T-shirt.

The 54-year-old chief of X, Tesla, SpaceX and The Boring Company earlier signed a draft agreement with the UAE government to dig the foundations for the “Dubai Loop.” He said the new public transportation system would speed residents and visitors underground across the Gulf financial center that is home to the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest skyscraper.

“You just wormhole from one part of the city – Boom! – you’re out in another part of the city,” Musk said, answering questions from Omar Al Olama, the UAE’s Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy, and Remote Work Applications, as well as Vice Chair of the conference.

Describing his work as head of U.S. President Donald Trump’s newly created Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, Musk said dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development reflects a new approach: Washington is  “less interested in interfering with the affairs of other countries,” he said.

“Basically, America should mind its own business rather than push for regime change all over the place,” Musk told the crowd, which included at least 30 presidents and prime ministers from across the globe.

Musk was the last in a series of tech leaders from some of the world’s biggest companies who spoke at the government summit. On Wednesday, Oracle’s Larry Ellison and former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair teamed up to examine the promise and threats of artificial intelligence.

Ellison, also speaking virtually with Blair onstage in Dubai, said AI will be transformative for governments and a broad range of industries including medicine, agriculture and robotics.

“Countries need to unify their data so it can be consumed and used by the AI model,” Ellison said, warning about the dangers of lax information security. “The digital tools we have right now are so primitive,” he said. “We can easily be locked out of all our data; passwords and data are so easily stolen and ransomed. We need to modernize our systems.”

On the first day of the conference, Robin Li, CEO of China’s Baidu, talked about how the high costs of AI development have forced the world’s second-largest economy to find new computing solutions, including DeepSeek, which has come up with vastly cheaper AI models than those developed by OpenAI, Microsoft and Google.

“You just don’t know when and where innovations come from,” Li said.

Saudi Arabia has lined up U.S. President Donald Trump to headline its annual FII Priority Summit in Miami, Fla., next week.

The kingdom’s Future Investment Initiative Institute announced on Wednesday that Trump will speak at the conference’s opening session Feb. 19 at the Faena Hotel in Miami Beach. 

Among those also scheduled to participate in the three-day event are SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son, BlackRock’s Robert S. Kapito, Oracle’s Safra Catz, Point72’s Steven Cohen and Bridgewater’s Nir Bar Dea. Saudi Public Investment Fund Governor Yasir Al-Rumayyan is the conference’s host.

The Miami conference will take place in the wake of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s pledge last month to invest at least $600 billion in the U.S. over the next four years. Trump responded with thanks while suggesting that the kingdom raise its investment to $1 trillion.

Florida is a center of Trump family activities, with the Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach serving as the President’s home between terms in the White House. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner lives with his wife Ivanka Trump and three children on Miami’s exclusive Indian Creek Island. Kushner’s $4.6 billion private equity fund Affinity Partners, which is backed by sovereign wealth funds in Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar, is based in Miami.

Trump’s appearance at the conference also comes amid tension between the two countries after the President proposed that the U.S. take possession of the Gaza Strip. The plan would move some 1.8 million Palestinian residents out of the war-ravaged territory while building resort hotels that would turn Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East.”

Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, the Palestinian Authority and other Arab countries have condemned the Trump plan, saying any Gaza reconstruction effort must not force residents to leave.