Emirates Airline announced that its services to Australia would grow to 70 a week to cater for increasing customer demand. Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney will all receive additional flights, new aircraft and capacity.
Services from the current 49 flights a week will grow to 56 flights a week this year, and by 2009 these will be increased to 70 flights a week. The airline will fly twice daily to Brisbane in 2008, three times daily to Melbourne and Sydney from 2009, and in addition, the airline will launch A380 direct services from Dubai to Sydney and Melbourne in 2009.
At a press conference in Sydney last month, HH Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, chairman and chief executive, Emirates Airline and group said, “Emirates has welcomed over six million passengers on their Australian flights since its first service to Melbourne in 1996 and today’s announcement represents a strong commitment to build on that growth.”
“The Emirates - Australian partnership has been a tourism and trade success story. Emirates has been fortunate to have received bi-partisan support at both a federal and state level over many years.
We are committing the latest technology to our Australian routes – the aircraft will be more efficient to operate and better for the environment.”
The second daily service to Brisbane will be introduced in October 2008 using the A340-500 and the third daily service to Melbourne will commence in February 2009. Sydney will go to a triple daily service in late 2009. These three additional flights will all be non-stop from Dubai.
The airline’s A380 services to Australia will commence in the first quarter of 2009 with a direct service to Sydney. The A380 service to Melbourne will come online as more aircraft are delivered from Airbus. From July 2008, Emirates’ existing daily service to Brisbane via Singapore will be served by the new Boeing 777-300ERs.