Emirates shared that it has officially refurbished its 100th aircraft as part of what it calls the largest retrofit program ever undertaken by a carrier.
The milestone comes just under four years after the project began in November 2022, with work carried out entirely in-house at the airline’s Engineering hangars in Dubai.
So far, the effort has touched 47 Airbus A380s and 53 Boeing 777s, giving each one a full nose-to-tail overhaul. That’s roughly 28 aircraft refreshed every year since the program launched — a pace Emirates says has required rewriting much of the playbook on how retrofits of this scale are done.
We’ve just hit a major milestone. Emirates has retrofitted its 100th aircraft. With a collective 4.4 million man hours invested, we continue to deliver an elevated customer experience across our network. https://t.co/BIFI4bKs8Q pic.twitter.com/DyY4Lh7LvJ
— Emirates (@emirates) July 14, 2026
About 20 more aircraft are expected to be finished by the end of this year, pushing the airline well past the halfway point on a 219-aircraft plan backed by $5 billion in investment.
The scope of the labor behind those numbers is considerable. Emirates says more than 400 engineers and technicians have logged a combined 4.4 million man hours over 44 months to get the job done. Sir Tim Clark, President of Emirates Airline, called it a significant achievement, noting that a project of this size and complexity, which was handled entirely in-house, demanded a level of planning, precision, and craftsmanship the airline hadn’t had to apply at this scale before.
A cabin-by-cabin rebuild
Every retrofit involves the aircraft’s interior being taken apart down to the studs and rebuilt piece by piece. Depending on the aircraft, that means engineers are working with more than 4,000 individual parts for an A380 and over 2,500 for a 777, all removed, refreshed or replaced and reinstalled with precision.
Each retrofitted aircraft has also come out of the hangar with a new Premium Economy cabin, part of a broader push to bring the product to more routes across the network.
In total, Emirates has installed more than 3,800 new Premium Economy seats through the program so far.
To manage a job of this scale, the Emirates Engineering team came up with some unconventional solutions of its own. Modified catering trucks are used to ferry large components between the retrofit workshop and the aircraft inside the hangars, while the team developed zonal tracking systems and specialized storage procedures to keep parts moving efficiently.
Engineers also designed and built custom equipment to access hard-to-reach areas of each aircraft’s interior. More than 100 suppliers have been involved in supporting the effort.
How the program came together
Emirates first announced the retrofit initiative in November 2021, initially covering 105 aircraft. The first plane to go through the process, an A380, entered the Dubai hangars in November 2022.
As customer demand grew, the airline expanded its scope twice in 2024 — first to 191 aircraft in May, then to 219 by the end of that year.
The first retrofitted Boeing 777 returned to commercial service that August.
The work has grown more ambitious over time, as well. In May 2026, engineers completed a two-to-three-class retrofit on an A380 that included structural changes to the aircraft, marking the first time a Premium Economy cabin has been added to the upper deck.
Emirates says thousands of kilograms of leather, fabric, and other materials removed from the aircraft are being upcycled into limited-edition items, including luggage sold under its “Aircrafted by Emirates” collection.
The airline has also turned repurposed Economy Class seat fabric into more than 4,000 backpacks, which have been distributed to children in 11 countries.