EMIRATES ANNOUNCES MORE A380 SERVICES TO THE US
(Posted 20th June 2014)
Travelers from East Africa to the United States, using Emirates out of Entebbe, Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, can now look forward to fly to yet more US destinations on the magnificent Airbus A380. Already serving New York and Los Angeles with the world’s largest passenger plane, will Dallas / Fort Worth switch from the B777-300ER to the A380 come October 01st before San Francisco and Houston will follow suit on December 01st and 03rd respectively.
Emirates’ is the largest operator of the A380 and already has 50 such aircraft on their fleet with a further 90 on order and is reportedly in talks with Airbus over the development of an A380NEO, which will further improve the economics of this aircraft type.
Emirates is one of East Africa’s most favourite foreign airlines, in part because the carrier only uses wide body aircraft compared to some of its Gulf rivals which use narrow body A320’s on their routes to East Africa or in comparison with Turkish Airlines, also a serious contender, which uses B737-800’s and B737-900’s on their routes to Entebbe, Kigali, Nairobi, Kilimanjaro, Dar es Salaam and Mombasa.
Commented a regular source close to the Emirates office in Kampala: ‘Our advantage is our size, our growing network, our one stop connection in Dubai to almost every major city in the world and the use of only wide body aircraft. Passengers from Entebbe and the other airports in East Africa fly to Dubai on the Airbus A330 or A340 or the B777 and enjoy the comfort of a big plane from their own port of embarkation throughout their journey. There is no compromise in terms of cabin environment, entertainment, catering. When in transit in Dubai our passengers have the best shopping, our premium passengers can enjoy the best lounges and those flying out of Dubai with the A380 have a special terminal which was built just for this aircraft type. All this helps us to be so successful’.
