Emirates Airline could start using its A380 super jumbo on its Boston route as it ramps up services to the US within a year.
Its inaugural non-stop flight from Dubai to Boston’s Logan airport landed on Monday.
The company started the route using a Boeing 777-200 which contains 264 seats. Emirates had sold all but two of those seats for the first flight to passengers from Dubai and 39 other destinations and was likely to be using the larger A380 planes on the route “within a year”, according to Emirates Airline president Tim Clark.
“Judging by our forward bookings over the next few months, which are full, it’s one of the routes which has grown so quickly that, give or take a few weeks in May, the summer period is looking particularly strong,” said Mr Clark.
“So much so that that little airplane will have to be changed to a bigger airplane fairly soon.
The new route to Boston is the eighth in Emirates rapidly expanding list of US destinations. The airline currently runs direct flights between its Dubai hub and Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington.
The company plans to start running daily flights to Chicago on August 5 and has plans to expand its US network further as it attempts to cash in on the USA’s corporate traffic and to challenge US airlines like American and United.
“The markets for the US that we have access to are very much in West Asia, Africa, the Indian Ocean, as far east as Western Australia – Perth,” Mr Clark said. “Some of the points in South East Asia, possibly even Bangkok, they will come home via Dubai simply because the value proposition is a lot better than some of our competitors, the elapsed time is quicker to get to places like Boston, you don’t have to go via intermediate points in Europe or even in the US.”
Emirates said that flights on the new route cost US$1,500 for a round trip in economy from Boston to Dubai and US$12,000 for a first class round trip.
lbarnard@thenational.ae
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