Emirates, the biggest international airline, will add flights to Seattle and Dallas in a revival of plans to establish a major route network to the world’s largest economy that it shelved after the 2001 terror attacks.
Emirates will begin daily services from Dubai to Dallas starting Feb. 2 and to Seattle from March 1 and may add U.S. cities including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and Washington, President Tim Clark said today in an interview.
Passenger numbers at Emirates have surged fivefold in a decade, making it the world No. 1 by international traffic. Hubs in Paris, Frankfurt and London are already under pressure as the carrier diverts long-haul passengers through Dubai, and Clark said the U.S. market could be targeted using Airbus SAS’s A380 superjumbo, of which it has 90 on order offering 45,000 seats.
“We’ve always had fairly ambitious plans for the U.S. and this is part of that,” Clark said by phone from Dubai. “It’s an immense market. There will be more to come, including increased frequencies and bigger planes. We have ideas for the East Coast, the north-south axis in the center and for the west.”
Emirates will also open its own first- and business-class lounge in San Francisco in November, having previously shared a United Airlines facility, and is looking at code-shares which would allow it to sell tickets beyond U.S. gateways, Clark said.
U.S. ‘Noise’
Emirates currently serves New York, Houston, Los Angeles and San Francisco, so that the two new routes and those under consideration would triple the number of U.S. destinations. The carrier had originally planned to operate 20 Airbus A340s to the U.S. about 10 years ago, but dropped the strategy following the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, Clark said.
“We’ll hear an increasing amount of noise from the U.S. carriers,” said Chris Tarry, an independent aviation analyst who has followed the industry for almost three decades. “There are always a lot of comments when Emirates goes into new markets and I don’t expect the U.S. to be any different.”
American customers flying from Seattle and Dallas will be able to connect with flights to destinations across the Middle East, Asia, India and Africa via Dubai, Emirates said in a statement. Services will initially be operated using Boeing Co. 777s, of which Emirates has the biggest fleet, though there’s potential to shift those and other U.S. routes to A380 operation as deliveries of the double-decker accelerate, Clark said.
Emirates will begin daily services from Dubai to Dallas starting Feb. 2 and to Seattle from March 1 and may add U.S. cities including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and Washington, President Tim Clark said today in an interview.
Passenger numbers at Emirates have surged fivefold in a decade, making it the world No. 1 by international traffic. Hubs in Paris, Frankfurt and London are already under pressure as the carrier diverts long-haul passengers through Dubai, and Clark said the U.S. market could be targeted using Airbus SAS’s A380 superjumbo, of which it has 90 on order offering 45,000 seats.
“We’ve always had fairly ambitious plans for the U.S. and this is part of that,” Clark said by phone from Dubai. “It’s an immense market. There will be more to come, including increased frequencies and bigger planes. We have ideas for the East Coast, the north-south axis in the center and for the west.”
Emirates will also open its own first- and business-class lounge in San Francisco in November, having previously shared a United Airlines facility, and is looking at code-shares which would allow it to sell tickets beyond U.S. gateways, Clark said.
U.S. ‘Noise’
Emirates currently serves New York, Houston, Los Angeles and San Francisco, so that the two new routes and those under consideration would triple the number of U.S. destinations. The carrier had originally planned to operate 20 Airbus A340s to the U.S. about 10 years ago, but dropped the strategy following the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, Clark said.
“We’ll hear an increasing amount of noise from the U.S. carriers,” said Chris Tarry, an independent aviation analyst who has followed the industry for almost three decades. “There are always a lot of comments when Emirates goes into new markets and I don’t expect the U.S. to be any different.”
American customers flying from Seattle and Dallas will be able to connect with flights to destinations across the Middle East, Asia, India and Africa via Dubai, Emirates said in a statement. Services will initially be operated using Boeing Co. 777s, of which Emirates has the biggest fleet, though there’s potential to shift those and other U.S. routes to A380 operation as deliveries of the double-decker accelerate, Clark said.