EMIRATES airlines has announced adjustments to its operational schedules in 2019 to minimize the impact of the closure of Dubai International Airport’s Southern Runway in April and May 2019, and to respond to global travel demand trends.
The airline also outlined its fleet plans for the year promising to step up services to Abuja with a three additional flights, beginning from June 1st, 2019, thus increasing the frequency to the Nigerian capital to a daily service, which will be operated on Emirates Boeing 777-300ER aircraft.
The new service flight EK786 will depart Dubai every day at 10:40 hrs and arrive Abuja at 14:55 hrs just as the return flight EK785 will leave Abuja same day at 18:10 hrs.
Commenting on the development; Sir Tim Clark, President Emirates Airline, said: “At Emirates, we pride ourselves on being a customer-focused airline with a commercially-driven business model. We invest in a modern and efficient aircraft fleet so we can offer industry-leading comforts to our customers, and we are agile in deploying our aircraft to destinations where it best serves customer demand.
“The changes we are implementing to our network schedules in 2019 are in line with this approach, taking into consideration global market dynamics and operational limitations including the maintenance work on Dubai Airport’s Southern Runway. Through the year, we will continue to keep a close watch on global markets and will maintain our flexibility to optimise the usage of our aircraft assets.”
A significant number of scheduled Emirates flights will be impacted by the closure of Dubai International Airport’s Southern Runway for maintenance work between 16 April and 30 May 2019.
This is just as the airline has concluded plans to take delivery of six new Airbus A380 aircraft and at the same time renew its fleet by retiring seven older Boeing 777 aircraft.
Emirates took delivery of its last Boeing 777-300ER aircraft in November 2018 and will commence taking deliveries of the next generation Boeing 777Xs in 2020.
and then