| Maurice Flanagan | |
|---|---|
| Born | 17 November 1928 [1] Leigh, Lancashire, England |
| Residence | Dubai, United Arab Emirates |
| Nationality | British |
| Citizenship | United Kingdom |
| Occupation | Executive Vice-Chairman of The Emirates Group |
| Employer | The Emirates Group |
| Home town | Leigh, Greater Manchester |
| Partner | Audrey Bolton |
Sir Maurice Flanagan, KBE (born 1928) is the founding CEO of Emirates and currently the Executive Vice-Chairman of The Emirates Group. He was born in 1928 in Leigh, Lancashire, England. In 1955, he married Audrey Bolton, a journalist, with whom he has three children and five grandchildren.
Flanagan attended Lymm Grammar School and Liverpool University, where he gained a BA in History and French. He performed his National Service in the RAF as a navigator with the rank of commissioned officer. During an evening outing, he suffered a knee injury that ruled out a potential career as a football player, which Blackburn Rovers had shown interest in fostering. Abandoning an athletic profession in 1953, he joined BOAC as a management trainee, subsequently working for the airline in Kenya, Sri Lanka, Peru, Iran, India and the UK.
In 1969, Flanagan was one of the winners of a TV playwriting competition run by the Observer newspaper and ITV's Saturday Night Theatre with "The Garbler Strategy",[2] a satire on management theory that starred Leonard Rossiter. Kenneth Tynan, one of the competition judges, invited Flanagan to write for the National Theatre, where Tynan was literary advisor. Flanagan chose the more sure route of a promising airline career.
Maurice Flanagan spent 25 years with BOAC and British Airways, until he was seconded from BA's senior management to Dnata, the organisation appointed by the government of Dubai to run its travel and airport interests.
In 1985, the Dubai government employed Flanagan to launch Emirates. The fledgling airline received $10 million start-up capital that it repaid the following year, marking its immediate success.
Flanagan was awarded a CBE in 2000 for services to communities in the United Arab Emirates and to aviation, and KBE in the 2010 Birthday Honours.[3]
Other awards include Flight International magazine's Personality of the Year, membership of the British Travel Industry Hall of Fame, Aviation Legend award by the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and Honorary Fellow (the Society's highest award), Liveryman of the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators, and membership of the Executive Committee of the World Travel and Tourism Council.