Air France A380 to offset reduced flights to Dubai

Air France KLM is to introduce an A380 superjumbo on its Dubai route to compensate for reducing its flight frequency to the Emirate as part of a number of recently released changes to its Winter schedule.

The Group's services to Dubai will be cut from 14 weekly flights to a daily service with the A380 superjumbo scheduled to operate on the route from 18 January, 2010.

The Group’s overall capacity for the winter 2009 season is down 2% in terms of available seat kilometres (ASK) compared with winter 2008 and -3.6% compared with winter 2007. On the long-haul and medium-haul networks capacity has been reduced by -1.8% and -2.9% respectively compared with winter 2008 and -2,8% and -6.4% compared with winter 2007. Accordingly the Group has instigated several frequency reductions across its long and short-haul networks.

The reduced long-haul flight frequencies to Dubai will see no change in the number of available seats due to its introdcution of the A380.