Summary
- Emirates will ‘permanently’ remove the Airbus A380 from its Dubai to Washington Dulles route in November.
- Switching to the 777-300ER means passenger capability per flight will reduce by 27%.
- Three in 4 Emirates passengers transited Dubai to other destinations in May.
Emirates will stop using the Airbus A380 from Dubai – an important widebody airport – to Washington Dulles in November. It just isn’t a seasonal adjustment. As a substitute, it has been ‘permanently’ removed, even though it change later. It comes as Lufthansa will use the double-decker quadjet to Dulles next summer.
Emirates: no more A380s to Dulles
The last A380 will leave for Dulles on November 4th, with the Boeing 777-300ER taking up after that. Using Cirium to investigate the schedule shows that the swap means seats on the market per flight are reduced by greater than 1 / 4 (-27%). Top notch is retained, just with eight as a substitute of 14 seats (-43%).
Between November and next August, the carrier now expects around 218,000 roundtrip seats on the market, down from the previously planned 298,000. This capability reduction should mean higher loads and pricing for Emirates, especially within the off-season with lower demand. In keeping with US DOT T-100 data, Dulles had a median seat load factor (SLF) of 84% in May, the newest month for which I actually have data, below its US operations generally.
Photo: Davide Calabresi | Shutterstock.
Emirates first served Dulles in September 2012, with the A380 used from February 2016. The sort continued until March 2020 and returned the next summer. From November, the schedule might be as follows, with all times local:
- Dubai to Dulles: EK231, 02:25-09:00 (14h 35m block time)
- Dulles to Dubai: EK232, 11:15-08:15+1 (13h)
Where do Dulles passengers go?
Analyzing T-100 data for May 2023 shows that Emirates carried about 26,700 passengers to/from Dulles. Relating that to booking data suggests that roughly 21% of passengers were point-to-point (P2P): they only flew between the 2 airports and didn’t connect.
Photo: Vincenzo Pace | Easy Flying.
Across all airlines, the Dulles-Dubai P2P market had a surprisingly high ~21,000 passengers in May (677 each day). Emirates captured lower than 1 / 4 of the entire, because it is frequently cheaper for P2P passengers to fly with a distinct carrier than with the hub airline itself. Higher fares to/from a hub, normally helped by non-stops or higher frequencies, are offset by lower fares through a hub, driving passenger volume.
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Three in 4 passengers transited
Some 77% of passengers – a substantial proportion – transited behind and beyond Dubai. Inevitably, India was fundamental, with Dulles to/from Hyderabad the preferred market.
Image: GCMap.
So as of passenger numbers, the remainder of the highest 10 markets were Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Beijing, Bengaluru, Bangkok, Dhaka, Jakarta, and Manila. (The remaining 2% of passengers transited Dulles or transferred at each airports.)
Still two A380 operators at Dulles
While Emirates will now not use the quadjet to Dulles, British Airways and – for the primary time – Lufthansa will. Next summer, LH414 will arrive from Munich at 19:25, followed 65 minutes later by BA293 from London Heathrow, Europe’s second-busiest airport by September flights. LH415 will depart at 22:20 and BA292 at 22:45.
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