In 2019, Emirates Airline was rethinking its growth strategy that had propelled it from a small start-up to one of the world's biggest carriers measured by international passenger mileage. Started in 1985, the airline deviated from the strategy of most other airlines to use its position between the United States, Europe, Africa, and Asia to connect ights between distant pairs of cities such as New York and Shanghai or London and Nairobi. Tim Clark, the rm's president referred to these as \"strange city pairs.\" No airline has grown like Emirates, whose expansion qualies it to claim the crown of the freewheeling sultan of the skies