Emirates Airlines Announces Further A380 Upgrade at Heathrow

Emirates Airline has announced it will introduce an Airbus A380 on the fourth of its five daily flights between Dubai and London Heathrow. The Super Jumbo will replace a Boeing 777-300ER on the carrier’s EK006/007 service from March 25, 2012, adding further capacity on what is one of the airline’s busiest routes. The carrier, the largest operator of the A380, first launched services to London with the type in December 2008 on its EK001/002 flight. A second daily rotation was introduced from June last year on its EK003/004 service, while a third daily rotation was announced just last month and will be introduced on the EK029/030 service from January 24, 2012.

The United Arab Emirates operator carried an estimated 428,000 O&D passengers on the route from Dubai to London Heathrow last year (a 45 per cent share of the total O&D traffic), although when you look at the wider global network of the carrier the number of passengers travelling from London Heathrow and transiting in Dubai increases this figure above 1.2 million. In terms of O&D markets, London Heathrow is actually Emirates’ second largest behind Tehran (546,000 O&D passengers), with Mumbai, Karachi, Bangkok, Delhi, Dhaka, Doha, Moscow Domodedovo and Kuwait City making up the top ten.

“This demonstrates the beauty of the A380 – its ability to increase our service to our passengers in style, and without adding traffic to London Heathrow’s busy schedule,” said Salem Obaidalla, Senior Vice President, Commercial Operations, Europe & Russian Federation, Emirates Airline. “As these magnificent aircraft continue to join our fleet, we can offer more seats and choice in and out of high density points, while enabling a greater number of passengers to benefit from the Emirates’ A380 experience.”

The fourth A380 service from Heathrow is another major investment for Emirates in the UK, where it operates 105 weekly flights from six gateways: London Heathrow, London Gatwick, Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle and Glasgow. In September last year, Manchester, which is now a triple daily service, became Emirates’ second UK gateway to be served by the Super Jumbo. Emirates’ operates 17 A380s as part of a wider fleet of 162 aircraft. This is set to grow significantly in the years ahead with a burgeoning orderbook of the type.