Maurice Flanagan, executive vice chairman of Emirates airline, has received a knighthood in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List.
The veteran airline executive is knighted for his services to the aviation industry for more than half a century.
He joined BOAC, the forerunner of British Airways, as a graduate trainee in 1953 after serving with the Royal Air Force.
He joined Emirates group in 1978 and became managing director of the Dubai-based airline when it was sent up in 1985.
According to Wikipedia, in 1969, Flanagan was one of the winners of a TV playwrighting competition run by The Observer newspaper and ITV Saturday Night Theatre, with The Garbler Strategy, 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 with which to advance developed skills and support his family, rather than reinvent himself in the uncertain world of the arts.
But he was also guided by a feeling for the romance of aviation.
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.
