After 25 years in South Africa, Emirates is now focusing on rapidly restoring its South African services to pre-pandemic levels, reaching 49 flights a week by May 2023.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Emirates offered 49 weekly flights between South Africa and Dubai, and the airline plans to return to this weekly service schedule by May 2023, says commercial operations Africa senior VP Badr Abbas, during a press gathering in Johannesburg this week.
He explains that a recent increase in air travel demand is continuing to outstrip capacity across the airline industry and that Emirates is “working hard” to provide more seat capacity, where possible, across its network to respond to the demand.
“For more than 25 years, we have invested in, and grown our operations to, South Africa. We are working hard to restore our services to pre-pandemic levels to help generate more opportunities for South Africans to explore the world and for travellers from around the world to experience South Africa’s unique natural experiences, world-renowned cuisine and local culture,” says Badr.
From the 1st of this year, Durban will have daily flights to Dubai. From February 1st, Cape Town will have double-daily services, and from March 1st, 2023, Johannesburg will have three flights a day. This will total 42 flights a week, and the airline says that by May 2023 it hopes to have restored all 49 flights that it had in South Africa pre-pandemic. That’s aside from the daily Harare and Lusaka flights, and Luanda, which will soon go five times a week to daily.
Badr also highlights that corporate air travel has been slower to recover post Covid-19; however, with the need to conduct business in person, as well as an increase in international conferences, Badr says the corporate segment will soon be rebuilt.
“The ramp up of flights is part of our ongoing commitment to support South Africa’s economic and tourism recovery through enhanced connectivity across all of our gateways,” says Badr.
Emirates’ partnerships with local airlines – SAA, Airlink, FlySafair, and CemAir – mean that it is seeing higher feeder demand in the regional and domestic market.
The VP also pointed out that South Africans are primarily travelling to the UK, Germany, Turkey, India, Thailand, the US, Saudi Arabia and Dubai. stating that,“these are our top destinations. Dubai is our number one destination this year and . . . we are seeing an increasing demand for Dubai.”
