Half-year earnings at Dubai-based airline Emirates beat company forecasts despite $490 million of unbudgeted costs incurred due to recent soaring oil prices, the firm's President Tim Clark said.

The company would probably experience a 1.5-2 percentage point cut in the proportion of seats sold over the next couple of months, though "from my point of view (the situation) is not nearly as bad as I thought it would be," Clark told reporters.

The unlisted airline, which did not reveal its results, had budgeted for an average fuel price of $101 per barrel.

"So the first six months the effect of that on the bottom line of the company...was a hit of 1.8 billion dirhams ($491 million," he said.

Emirates adjusted seat prices in response and was seeing the benefits of it now, he said.

"(Things) are better than we thought they would be given the terrible problem we've had with the oil price in the first half of the year," he said.

He said he expected Emirates' costs to fall in the second half due to the recent sharp declines in oil prices, but it was adding that it was hard to estimate the income side due to the impact of the global financial crisis on peoples' travel plans.

Clark said Emirates would open fewer routes over the next financial year, without giving details, adding that it would take delivery of "quite a number of aircraft" and continue to add frequency capacity to current routes.

Financing for the delivery of aircraft over the next six to nine months was covered, though Emirates was continuing to face delays in the delivery of its Being 777 aircraft due to the Boeing strike.

"The longer it goes on the more difficult it is for us in terms of growing our network," he said.

Clark said the global financial crisis was not hitting the firm's business plan. "We have faith in our ability to react to the crisis and work through the crisis." - Reuters