Bigger and Bigger

Emirates profits on extremely cheap labor costs as most of their ground staff in Dubai are SE Asians that earn a fraction of what other countries compensate their employees. Unions are not allowed in the UAE so that's a huge advantage on cost and work rules. Fuel costs in the mid-east are naturally far less than the rest of the World.

DXB is over-scheduled many hours during the day and there is no way to add any runway capacity. The A380 makes it worse as separation standards behind them are far greater than normal heavy jets. During low visiblity conditons, the airport closes one of the two runways so they run arrivals and departures on the same runway. Delays will multiply as times goes on and efficiency will tank very fast.

Emirates has a few advantages that other carriers do not have to deal with (other than gulf carriers like Ethiad and Qatar)

First regardless of how Tim Clark and Paul Hogan state it, there are sweet deals for feul subsidies that the gulf airlines receive.
Second, the last rights and costs associated at their home hubs is structured in a much more cost effective manner than lest us say a British Airways, Lufthansa or Air France get at their home base.
Finally as mentioned above the labour cost structure is much lower than their competitors across the world.

Every airline headquartered in the middle-east has a fuel cost advantage but only Emirates/Fly Dubai benefit from the city of Dubai as a "western-friendly" Arab city. Kuwait City, Doha and Abu Dhabi are still mostly unknowns because of their local laws and culture.

Foreign airlines do get the cheaper fuel while in DXB or other mid-east airport but the middle east is only a small fraction of their route structure while Emiates/Fly Dubai benefit from getting 50% of their fuel at reduced prices.

I don't have a problem with EK making some money but the article tries to paint the CEO and managent as financial geniuses and the rest of the worlds airline managers as idiots since they're not expanding or making as much money. EK has a monopoly on over half of their routes and they're not cheap by any measure. Lucky for them, the Arabs have the money to drop on Business/First class tix and the ex-pats in Dubai are guaranteed two trips to their home country each year by their employers so they've got a pretty deep well to continue to dip into.