Emirates goes double daily to Manila

As more triple seven joins its fleet for Asia-Pacific operations

November 5, 2009

Dubai - Emirates airline is increasing its services to the Asia-Pacific region starting next month with more flights scheduled to Bangkok, Sydney, Jakarta and Manila.

Starting in December, the Dubai-based airline will introduce a fourth daily service to Bangkok, a third daily service to Sydney, double daily to Manila and one additional service to Jakarta. With the latest addition, the airline’s operation in Asia Pacific will increase to 187 flights per week. Its seat load factor will jump by 13 per cent to the region to accommodate the expected rise in demand from said cities to its Dubai hub.

“Asian markets are rebounding with reports of resurgent traffic at key airports in the region. We are confident of seeing a recovery soon and are introducing additional capacity to serve the increasing demand.” says Richard Jewsbury, senior vice president, Commercial Operations Far East and Australasia. The airline also said that almost 30% of its revenue came from the Asia-Pacific region.

According to Jewsbury, the rise in capacity is the result of their taking delivery of new aircraft that were originally meant to keep up with market demand calculated prior to the global economic slump. For example, the latest Boeing 777-300ER scheduled for delivery this month is a bi-class seat configured plane primarily geared to serve the Philippine and Indonesian market where it will have a regular rotation with two flights to Manila and a flight to Jakarta every week.

Emirates airlines operates tri-class service (12 First, 42 Business and 310 Economy Class seats) to Bangkok and Sydney while it operates bi-class service (42 Business and 400 Economy Class seats with 16.7 tonnes of cargo capacity) to Manila and Jakarta using Boeing 777-300ER aircraft.

The airline also intends to upgrade its Asia-Pacific destinations with A380 service in the next two years starting with Bangkok and Manila where it has registered impressive growth as compared to other destinations in the region despite the global downturn. It will also open new routes in Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand soon as new aircraft are gradually being added to its fleet.

It already received 20 new aircraft as part of the 161 aircraft orders worth approximately $52 billion dollars and is still pursuing an aggressive purchase plan despite the bleak traffic forecast by IATA.

"Emirates airlines has 53 A380 aircraft on firm order, with two of these due for delivery in December 2009. Emirates currently has five A380s in its fleet and we will receive a further 15 up till the end of November 2010. We expect to be its largest operator of the type by that time. We remain in close discussions with Airbus in relation to our order," said Tim Clark, Emirates Airlines President.

International Air Transport Association data show that revenues in the Middle East grew by 18.2 per cent in September compared to the same month last year, and the Asia-Pacific region grew 2.1 per cent.

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