Emirates Airline is hiring thousands of staff to service its burgeoning fleet of A380 superjumbos, with each requiring more than 150 air crew.

The airline’s record order for the Airbus A380 is prompting it to embark on an ambitious hiring drive across six continents.

For each A380 that enters its fleet the airline needs 20 pilots and 133 cabin crew, Emirates said yesterday.

With more A380s expected this year as well as deliveries from Boeing for other large passenger aircraft, Emirates expects to hire about 4,000 cabin attendants, it said.

“Emirates is currently in full recruitment mode,” the airline said on the eve of participating in Europe’s largest travel fair, the ITB event in Berlin, where it will recruit more German-speaking cabin crew from a stand whose centrepiece is a 150-tonne, three-storey globe. This year, the giant rotating structure will feature life-size replicas of the A380 onboard shower spa and lounge.

The airline currently has 12,000 cabin crew, including 2,000 who operate on its fleet of 15 A380s. Emirates has another 75 orders for the 500-seat plane.

The airline’s recent growth propelled it last year into the top spot for international airline capacity worldwide, ahead of Lufthansa.

Now Emirates has also moved up another set of rankings: it is the world’s third-largest airline, ahead of United Airlines, in terms of monthly capacity. The Dubai carrier is expected to fly 16.9 billion seat kilometres this month, up 9.9 per cent from the same period last year.

Emirates Airline Thursday said its Airbus A380 from Dubai to Manchester Airport had to abort landing at the last minute due to a “strong gust of wind”.

“Our A380 flight from Dubai to Manchester encountered a strong gust of wind on approach to Manchester and the aircraft captain elected to discontinue

the landing and performed a routine climb away from the runway,” the airline said in a statement.

“The aircraft’s wheels did briefly touch down on the runway before it climbed away, after which it circled and landed perfectly normally. This manoeuvre is entirely routine”.

According to the Daily Post published from UK the double-decker plane, which was supposed to return to Dubai a few hours later, was then hit by an electrical fault which delayed the flight by another 24 hours. The incident occurred on Monday.

The newspaper said passengers were furious about the delays. “One said he had waited on the plane for four hours, then in the airport for another three-and-a-half hours before collecting his luggage and being taken to a hotel,” the report said.

The Emirates A380 service to Manchester was launched last week amidst much fanfare.

Emirates, the world’s biggest airline by international traffic, said the 90 Airbus SAS A380 superjumbos it’s buying won’t be sufficient to meet the carrier’s projected demand.

The aircraft “are well spoken for and frankly, the way things are going for us at the moment, the 90 certainly won’t be enough,” President Tim Clark said today in a phone interview. “Demand for our services seems to be continuing to grow apace. We’re moving forward very robustly.”

The carrier, already the biggest customer for Airbus’s 517- seat plane, has expanded its traffic sixfold in the last decade by connecting international passengers through its Dubai hub. Emirates is also the biggest operator of Boeing’s 777 long- range airliner.

Emirates has 12 Airbus A380s in its fleet, with another three to go into service by November. Deliveries will restart in September 2011, with the carrier receiving the remaining planes through November 2017.

If you are flying first class on Emirates you get to take a shower on board!

Delays in aircraft deliveries have not only forced Emirates to pushback start dates for two new California destinations, but have also constrained the number of flights offered by the carrier to those cities.

Prior to the Boeing machinists strike in July Emirates warned of 777 delivery delays due to production problems with a galley supplier.

Flights offered by Emirates that began on 26 October between Dubai and Los Angeles debuted more than a month behind the targeted 11 September launch date.

Emirates senior vice president commercial operations for the Americas Nigel Page tells ATI the carrier had to scale back plans for daily service to three weekly flights as a result of Boeing freezing aircraft deliveries with the start of the machinists strike now entering its ninth week.

Page says Emirates is sourcing the Los Angeles route with a Boeing 777-200LR from its existing fleet, which comprises six aircraft of the type according to the ATI ACAS database.

The carrier will experience the same scenario on its Dubai-San Francisco flights scheduled for launch on 15 December instead of the original 26 October date for the inaugural flight.

Emirates would like to operate its A380s from Dubai to Los Angeles or even Houston, although that would require flying fewer passengers on the A380. But CEO Tim Clark notes that at around 430 seats, it would still provide better operating economics than the Boeing 777-200LR now used on the route.

Emirates is looking to make its own contributions in reducing weight reduction by considering reducing cruise speed to Mach 0.83 from Mach 0.85 to reduce fuel burn. It is also in talks with Russia about more direct routes.

Moreover, Clark notes “we’ve been on an intensive program of weight reduction.” The airline thinks 2-3 tons can be removed from the aircraft, scrutinizing everything from carpeting to curtains, and deciding against foot rests for economy-class seats.

But the weight concern hasn’t kept the airline from splashing out on its premium product, including offering two showers in first class. That will require the A380 to carry 25% more water than would otherwise be required. The showers are limited to 5 min. per passenger, with the airline also adding two dedicated cabin service assistants to its crew to clean the showers and toilets. Nevertheless, for the showers alone the aircraft carries half a ton of extra weight.

Passengers flying on Emirates new Airbus A380 – to be delivered this autumn – will be able to take a hot shower mid-flight.

The Dubai-based carrier claims it will be the first commercial airline to install the facility.

It will be available in the airline’s first-call cabin from October 1 on the Dubai to New York route.

The airline has been criticised by green pressure groups who say the ‘mile-high shower’ is not environmentally friendly.

The plane will have to carry an extra tonne of water to feed the shower, a payload equivalent to 12 extra passengers.

Emirates has yet to reveal the details of its A380 first-class cabin but has promised it will be even more extravagant than Singaopre Airlines’ cabin.

Emirates said that the “first authorized mobile phone call made from a commercial flight” occurred yesterday aboard one of its A340-300s flying at 30,000 ft. en route from Dubai to Casablanca, marking the launch of its $27 million program to equip its fleet with the AeroMobile system that will allow passengers to use their own cell phones in flight.

Emirates Airlines said it has spent 18 months working “closely with regulators and telecommunications providers across the globe, fully completing rigorous testing and certification processes” so that it could become the first airline to allow passengers to use mobile phones. It said a 777-300 will join the A340-300 “very shortly” in having an in-operation AeroMobile system and other aircraft in its fleet will be equipped gradually.

Chairman and CEO Ahmed bin Saeed Al-Maktoum said, “All seats across our fleet are already equipped with in-seat phones, as well as e-mail and text messaging capabilities via the in-seat entertainment system. . .we are delighted to now offer them the choice of using their own mobile phones.”

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Just three months after launching flights to Houston, its second U.S. gateway in the U.S. in addition to New York Kennedy, Emirates is expected on Thursday to announce that it will inaugurate new flights to Los Angeles this fall.

On Sept. 1, Emirates expects to become the first Gulf region carrier to fly to the U.S. West Coast when it launches flights from Dubai to Los Angeles. It intends to use the 777-200LR on the route, the same type of aircraft it is using to fly to Houston. The aircraft will be configured with eight First Class suites, 42 lie-flat Business Class seats, and 216 Economy Class seats.

The Los Angeles flights will be the longest in its network, taking 15 hrs. 55 mins. to fly to Los Angeles and 16 hrs. 35 mins. to return.

Nigel Paige, senior VP of commercial operations, North America, says “this opens a whole are of the U.S. for us.” Los Angeles was chosen not only because of its large catchment area, but also because of Hollywood and Dubai’s ties to the film industry, he said.

The aircraft will include some special features, such as the ability to call other seats, as well as to download photos onto the video screen from a digital camera.

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Dubai-owned Emirates airlines, the largest carrier in the Middle East, said on Sunday it would begin flying its fleet of Airbus A380 superjumbos in October.

Emirates is scheduled to fly the giant double-decker plane for the first time on October 1, on a non-stop flight from Dubai to New York after which the flight would become daily, a statement said. The company said it will open a daily Dubai-London service with the A380 starting December 1 and from Dubai to Sydney and Auckland starting February 2009.

Emirates is the largest single customer of Airbus’s A380 with 58 on order. It expects to receive the first five units later this year.