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Emirates, the Middle East’s biggest airline, topped up its order of Boeing 777X planes on Monday despite years of delays, delivering a vote of confidence to the US manufacturer at the Dubai Airshow.The order of 65 777-9s, valued at $38 billion including engines, came despite last month’s announcement that delivery was now due in 2027 — seven years behind the original schedule.Emirates, already the biggest customer for the Boeing 777, now has 270 777X, 10 777 freighters and 35 Boeing 787s on order.The 777X deliveries will start in the second quarter of 2027, Emirates Group chairman and chief executive Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum said.”Some people may have doubts about Emirates’ huge backlog of aircraft orders,” he told a press conference. “But I assure that each and every aircraft on order has been carefully factored into Emirates’ growth plans.”The announcement on day one at the biennial airshow, the biggest in the Middle East, came as China showcased its COMAC C919 for the first time in the region.China’s first domestically produced passenger jet is a stab at challenging the decades-long dominance of Boeing and its European rival Airbus.Brazil’s Embraer unveiled orders from Air Cote d’Ivoire for four passenger planes and another three for Switzerland’s Helvetic Airways.Boeing also announced smaller deals with Ethiopian Airlines, which ordered 11 737 MAX jets, and nine 737-8s for Air Senegal on Monday.The US plane-maker is trying to turn the page on a torrid period including deadly crashes, court cases and a strike in its defence arm, as well as the delivery delays.- ‘Do more business’ -“I don’t think there was any convincing that needed to be done, frankly,” Brad McMullen, Boeing’s senior vice-president of sales and marketing, said of the negotiations with Emirates.”I think they’ve committed to the 777-9, their future depends on it. Our future depends on Emirates. “So, when two parties depend on each other, you can normally find a way to do more business.”Boeing’s delays have forced Emirates to refurbish much of its existing fleet, including its Airbus A380s which are now out of production.As it searches for ways to replace the giant A380s, the latest order includes the option to upgrade to a bigger version of the 777X, if Boeing chooses to build it.Boeing will take a “hard look” at building a bigger plane, but has not made any commitments, McMullen said.”We have committed that we’re gonna study it. And that’s what we’re gonna do,” he said.”It’s probably no secret that Emirates has wanted a bigger aircraft to replace the A380s, and we’re gonna see if that’s our airplane.”Emirates also said it would start rolling out free in-flight wifi via Starlink, Elon Musk’s satellite-powered network, from Sunday.

The Kurdish militant PKK said Monday its forces had withdrawn from a key border area in northern Iraq in a move aimed at shoring up the peace process with Turkey. The pull out comes six months after the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) formally renounced its armed struggle against Turkey, drawing a line under four decades of violence that had claimed some 50,000 lives.”As of the evening of November 16, our forces.. in the Zap region have been withdrawn,” the group said in a statement published by Firat news agency. “Currently the risk of conflict in the area has been completely eliminated,” it said, describing the withdrawal from Zap as a “significant practical contribution” that showed the PKK’s “commitment” to ongoing efforts to reset ties with Ankara.”We believe this new step will serve the resolution of the Kurdish issue and will help with the peace and democratisation of Turkey.”Ankara began indirect talks with the PKK late last year, with its jailed founder Abdullah Ocalan in February urging his militants to lay down their weapons and embrace democratic means to advance the Kurdish cause. After formally announcing their dissolution in May, they began destroying their weapons in July and in late October, began withdrawing all their forces from Turkish soil to northern Iraq. Turkey has set up a cross-party parliamentary commission to lay the groundwork for the peace process and prepare a legal framework for the political integration of the PKK and its fighters. The PKK has long had bases in the Zap region of northern Iraq, which was targeted by Turkish troops in a ground operation in 2008. The Turkish military has consistently focused its operations on the Zap area, which has seen intense clashes over the years, despite the operational difficulties of advancing in such mountainous terrain. Until recently, the PKK has maintained a strong presence in Zap, which has symbolic importance for the militants as the place where its headquarters were initially located before moving further east to the Qandil Mountains. A resident in a nearby area told AFP the Zap region was very sparsely populated with only PKK militants and Turkish troops operating there, apart from shepherds who would go there during the summer months. Due to the rugged nature of the terrain, the PKK sometimes used drones to deliver food and clothes to its fighters, the resident said. The PKK says it wants to pursue a democratic struggle to defend the rights of the Kurdish minority in line with a historic call in February by Ocalan who has led the process from his prison cell on Imrali island near Istanbul. The 76-year-old has been serving a life sentence there in solitary confinement since 1999.burs-hmw/yad