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The flydubai legal team has had a busy twelve months, with senior vice president of legal Krishan Sunnadurai’s function being at the forefront of a number of deals aimed at gaining the company an advantage in the highly competitive low-cost airline market. Head of commercial legal Richard Stephens – who was bestowed particular praise by nominators on the back of his contribution to a number of successful projects by the company – provided some further insight into some of these transactions: ‘In November 2017, we announced a commitment to a US$27bn order for 225 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft to support the growth of our fleet, in the third aircraft order placed by the airline with Boeing in its eight-year history’. In order to finance this, he goes on, the team had to support the company by utilising new and pioneering financing structures. ‘In December’, he explains, ‘we announced the closing of two new financing structures: a Japanese Operating Lease with a Call Option (JOLCO) and an Aircraft Finance Insurance Consortium (AFIC) insured debt financing structure – this was the first time a JOLCO transaction financed this aircraft type and the first time an AFIC transaction was used in this region’. On the highly publicised and tragic case of flydubai Flight 981, which crashed – fatally for all on board – in Rostov-On-Don in March 2016, Stephens mentions that ‘all legal matters relating to this are handled by the legal disputes team, have been cross-border and have involved close cooperation with all teams within the business’; providing ample evidence of the team’s crisis-management abilities. Krishan Sinnadurai (senior vice president legal and a GC Powerlist: Middle East 2017 – featured lawyer) headed the team and was integral to these and many other developments at the company, but he moved to pastures new as of July 2018, being replaced by former Air Berlin general counsel Michelle Johnson. Other noteworthy lawyers among the 15-strong team include head of finance legal Michelle Ayed and head of regulatory and disputes legal Scott Phillips.